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Bible Quotation For Today/Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you
Luke 11/09-13: "‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

Bible Quotation For Today/Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’
Acts of the Apostles 16/25-34: ""About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’ The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God."

LCCC Latest analysis, editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 14-15/15
Obama’s Iran Deal Has the Makings of a Catastrophe/Daniel Pipes/July 14/15
Six world powers adopt nuclear deal with Iran/MICHAEL WILNER/J.Post/July 14/15
Six world powers adopt nuclear deal with Iran/MICHAEL WILNER/J.Post/July 14/15
Iran crowned as top regional, nuclear-threshold power. Win for Obama, fiasco for Netanyahu/DEBKAfile/July 14/15
Analysis: Israel's military option won't vanish in a post-Iran deal era/YAAKOV LAPPIN/July 14/15
Iran deal could lead to improved covert Arab-Israel cooperation/ARIEL BEN SOLOMON/July 14/15
Iran deal could lead to improved covert Arab-Israel cooperation/ARIEL BEN SOLOMON/J.Post/July 14/15
Analysis: 30-year journey to stop Iranian nukes may soon move to Congress/HERB KEINON/July 14/15
Analysis: Nuclear deal not perfect, but the skies are not going to fall tomorrow/YOSSI MELMAN/July 14/15
John and Javad, the Odd Couple who Struck the Iran Deal/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/14 July/15
Swedish Jihadi: "Go There with a Bomb"/One month of Islam in Sweden: June 2015/Ingrid Carlqvist/Gatestone Institute/July 14/15
Iran's Quds Day: Death to America, Death to Israel/by Lawrence A. Franklin/Gatestone Institute/July 14/15

LCCC Bulletin itles for the Lebanese Related News published on July 14-15/15
Paoli: Preserving Lebanon's Stability is Army's Role, France is an Assistance
Canada's FM, Nicholson Comments on Nuclear Deal Reached by P5+1 and Iran
Canada's FM, Nicholson Welcomes Libyan Political Agreement
Dulaimi Says she Was Married to Baghdadi for a Month
Prosecutors Seek Link between U.S. Businessman and Lebanon Arms Smuggling Plot
Lebanese Officials in Action to Resolve Cabinet Crisis
Change and Reform Calls for 'Respecting Agreement' over Cabinet's Decision-Taking Mechanism
Officials: No Breakthrough in Hizbullah-Mustaqbal Dialogue
Lebanese Officials in Action to Resolve Cabinet Crisis
Italian FM Concerned over Baabda Vacuum, Says Lebanon Can Preserve Coexistence

Paoli: Preserving Lebanon's Stability is Army's Role, France is an Assistance
Naharnet/July 14/15/French ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli stated on Tuesday that the international agreement to preserve Lebanon's stability can only be achieved through Lebanon's army and security forces, As Safir daily reported. “There is no such thing as an international umbrella and we have never said that. In reality there is an international understanding U.N. Security Council to preserve Lebanon's stability,” said Paoli in an interview to the daily. He added: “However stability cannot be achieved solely through an international decision, particularly in light of the current changing circumstances, and France has its capacities through the UNIFIL in the South that alone cannot guarantee continued stability. Maintaining stability is the role of the Lebanese army and security forces.”Assuring that the French weapons to Lebanon that have been financed through a $3 billion Saudi grant have not been frozen, he said: “Our role is to help through the military aid program that supports the army. There is a French-Saudi commitment to back the army.”He stated that “Lebanon's regime was not established to fabricate understandings among the Lebanese but more likely it was made to forbid parties from controlling each other. The Lebanese political machine is unable to make decisions.”“France has succeeded, in the darkest circumstances, to create the International Support Group for Lebanon. France always discusses issues of Lebanon with all its partners in the region, and we will not stop doing so, but the decision to elect a president is not in its hands.”

Canada's FM, Nicholson Comments on Nuclear Deal Reached by P5+1 and Iran
July 14, 2015 - Ottawa, Ontario - Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada
The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement:
“We appreciate the efforts of the P5+1 to reach an agreement. At the same time, we will continue to judge Iran by its actions not its words. To this end, Canada will continue to support the efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor Iran’s compliance with its commitments.
“Iran continues to be a significant threat to international peace and security owing to the regime’s nuclear ambitions, its continuing support for terrorism, its repeated calls for the destruction of Israel, and its disregard for basic human rights.
“We will examine this deal further before taking any specific Canadian action.”

Canada's FM, Nicholson Welcomes Libyan Political Agreement
July 14, 2015 - Ottawa, Ontario - Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada
The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement:
“Canada welcomes the political agreement initialled in Morocco on July 12, 2015—an agreement which constitutes a vital first step toward the restoration of peace and stability in Libya, and the resumption of the democratic transition process. We salute the resolve, determination and courage of those responsible for the negotiation of this agreement.
“We call upon those members of the political dialogue who have yet to commit to this agreement to do so without delay. Only a united Libya can hope to mobilize the political, social, institutional, economic and security resources necessary to end violence, restore the rule of law, deliver essential services, rebuild institutions, address pressing humanitarian needs, and protect and defend human rights.
“Canada will continue to stand with Libya and the Libyan people in their effort to build a prosperous, inclusive and democratic society, free from the scourge of violent extremism and terrorism.”

Dulaimi Says she Was Married to Baghdadi for a Month
Naharnet/July 14/15/Saja al-Dulaimi, a divorcee of Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has revealed to the court that she had been only married to the man for a month. “I haven’t committed any offense,” al-Dulaimi was quoted as telling the military court on Monday. “My only crime is that I entered Lebanon as a refugee … I married a (man) called Hisham Mohammed six years ago but only for a month,” she reportedly said while holding her newborn.
“His name wasn't Abu Bakr,” the woman told the court. Al-Dulaimi was arrested at a checkpoint on al-Madfoun Bridge in the North last year. She has been charged with belonging to an armed organization with the intent of carrying out a terrorist attack.
Al-Dulaimi has four children – twins from her first husband, a girl who is Baghdadi's daughter and the newborn from her Palestinian husband Kamal Mohammed Khalaf. Monday's session was postponed because al-Dulaimi does not have an attorney. “It's been eight months that I am under arrest and I don't need a lawyer. I have nothing” to say, she said.

Prosecutors Seek Link between U.S. Businessman and Lebanon Arms Smuggling Plot
Naharnet/July 14/15/U.S. prosecutors have tried to link a prominent businessman in the State of Iowa to a scheme in which four defendants are charged with using his shipping company facilities to smuggle weapons to Lebanon. Bill Aossey Jr. had been in contact with the suspects, one of whom is a close friend, and is shown on surveillance video briefly going into one of the containers after it was packed, prosecutors in Cedar Rapids argued Monday.His attorney Haytham Faraj said that Aossey was unaware of the weapons and shouldn't face "guilt by association."But U.S. District Judge Linda Reade said she was skeptical of Aossey's claim of ignorance, noting he was upset after learning the container had been seized. Aossey was found guilty on Monday of falsifying documents as part of a scheme to export beef to Malaysia and Indonesia that didn't meet those countries' strict slaughter standards. The federal jury in Cedar Rapids convicted him of 15 of 19 charges he faced, including conspiracy, making false statements on export certificates and wire fraud. He was acquitted of four counts of money laundering. Aossey is the founder of the Midamar Corp., a Cedar Rapids-based company that is considered a pioneer in the sale of halal meat and food products. The 73-year-old is also a longtime leader in the city's relatively large Muslim community. After the verdict, Reade ordered Aossey held in federal custody. Assistant U.S. Attorney Rich Murphy said Aossey could face a prison term of five or more years at his sentencing, which hasn't been scheduled.Associated Press

Lebanese Officials in Action to Resolve Cabinet Crisis
Naharnet/July 14/15/Several parties have launched initiatives to resolve the dispute among cabinet members over the government's decision-making mechanism, sources said. Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat, a centrist, has tasked Health Minister Wael Abou Faour to hold talks with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Hizbullah officials. A ministerial source told al-Mustaqbal daily published on Tuesday that Jumblat aims to find a solution to the cabinet crisis before it convenes next week.
The solution should be acceptable by all parties represented in the government, mainly Salam and Free Patriotic Movement official MP Michel Aoun, the source said. Abou Faour met with Salam at the Grand Serail on Monday. Lebanese Forces officials also told al-Mustaqbal that LF chief Samir Geagea will try to bridge the gap between Salam and Aoun although his party is not represented in the cabinet. Geagea met on Tuesday with the PM at the Grand Serail. Differences between Salam and Aoun grew last month when the FPM began warning that its ministers would not attend any session whose agenda is not topped with the appointment of high-ranking military and security officials. Last week, Aoun's son-in-law Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil accused the prime minister of violating the Constitution and infringing on the Christian president’s powers at the start of the cabinet session. Despite the dispute and a protest held the FPM near the Grand Serail, the cabinet decided to meet on July 23 to discuss its working mechanism in the absence of a president. A high-ranking parliamentary source said that Hizbullah has also launched an initiative to resolve differences between its two allies – Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri who heads the Amal Movement.
The source told al-Mustaqbal that Hizbullah is trying to convince Berri to add several draft-laws that are backed by the Change and Reform bloc to the agenda of a parliamentary session that he is seeking to call for. Aoun's lawmakers and other Christian blocs have said they would boycott any session which does not have on its agenda a draft-law on granting Lebanese expats the citizenship.
Berri said on Sunday that it was important to hold an extraordinary parliamentary session to approve several draft-laws, including the Bisri dam, which when built would bring potable water to 1.8 million people in Lebanon. Parliament, which has been paralyzed since the term of President Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014, convenes twice a year in two ordinary sessions -- the first starts mid-march until the end of May and the second from the middle of October through the end of December. Berri needs the signature of several cabinet ministers to call for an extraordinary legislative session in the absence of a president.

Change and Reform Calls for 'Respecting Agreement' over Cabinet's Decision-Taking Mechanism
Naharnet/July 14/15/The Change and Reform bloc condemned on Tuesday the silence over the “assaults committed against student demonstrators” in front of the Grand Serail last week, while demanding that agreements made over the cabinet's decision-taking power be respected. MP Ibrahim Kanaan said after the bloc's weekly meeting: “It is everyone's duty to respect the agreements made at government regarding its mechanism.”Addressing the demonstrations of Free Patriotic Movement supporters on Thursday in front of the government building, he criticized the absence of condemnations from “parliament and other officials.”“Last week's developments may represent a precedent in Lebanon in that democratic actions can be suppressed,” he warned after the Change and Reform bloc's weekly meeting.The FPM supporters were protesting against the government of Prime Minister Tammam Salam, while a cabinet session was being held at the same time. The protesters were gathered in the vicinity of the Grand Serail and attempted to break the army's barrier around the area, resulting in scuffles between both sides. “The students who were present in front of the Grand Serail were there to express themselves. Were all the political and military measures taken in the area so necessary?” continued Kanaan. “The guards tasked with protecting the building were more than enough to thwart any so-called danger posed by the demonstrators,” he added “The civilians were calling for their rights in a democratic manner. Where is the crime in that?” he wondered. The cabinet will convene on July 23 to discuss its working mechanism in the absence of a president. FPM chief MP Michel Aoun had called on his supporters to prepare for rallies to restore what he described as “the rights of the Christians.”Aoun has been lobbying for the appointment of Commando Regiment commander Chamel Roukoz, his son-in-law, as army chief.

Officials: No Breakthrough in Hizbullah-Mustaqbal Dialogue
Naharnet/July 14/15/The 15th round of talks between Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal Movement that lasted until dawn Tuesday failed to reach a breakthrough on controversial issues, officials told al-Mustaqbal daily. The officials, who were not identified, said the talks started at 10:00 pm Monday and lasted till 1:00 am during which several issues were discussed. The dialogue between Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal was launched in December under the sponsorship of Speaker Nabih Berri to reduce sectarian tension linked to the war in neighboring Syria. Hizbullah representatives Hussein Khalil, Minister Hussein al-Hajj Hassan and MP Hassan Fadlallah attended the talks. Al-Mustaqbal was represented by Nader Hariri, Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq and MP Samir al-Jisr. Minister Ali Hassan Khalil attended the Ain el-Tineh meeting as Berri's representative. Following the talks, the conferees issued a terse statement saying they “discussed the political and security developments, the work of constitutional institutions and the steps needed to be taken in that regard.” The statement added that the two sides agreed to “consolidate dialogue between all factions to resolve current matters.”But the Mustaqbal sources said no major progress was made on several issues. The only thing they agreed on is to hold a new round of talks at the start of July, said the sources.

Lebanese Officials in Action to Resolve Cabinet Crisis
Naharnet/July 14/15/Several parties have launched initiatives to resolve the dispute among cabinet members over the government's decision-making mechanism, sources said. Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat, a centrist, has tasked Health Minister Wael Abou Faour to hold talks with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Hizbullah officials. A ministerial source told al-Mustaqbal daily published on Tuesday that Jumblat aims to find a solution to the cabinet crisis before it convenes next week.
The solution should be acceptable by all parties represented in the government, mainly Salam and Free Patriotic Movement official MP Michel Aoun, the source said. Abou Faour met with Salam at the Grand Serail on Monday. Lebanese Forces officials also told al-Mustaqbal that LF chief Samir Geagea will try to bridge the gap between Salam and Aoun although his party is not represented in the cabinet. Geagea met on Tuesday with the PM at the Grand Serail. Differences between Salam and Aoun grew last month when the FPM began warning that its ministers would not attend any session whose agenda is not topped with the appointment of high-ranking military and security officials. Last week, Aoun's son-in-law Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil accused the prime minister of violating the Constitution and infringing on the Christian president’s powers at the start of the cabinet session. Despite the dispute and a protest held the FPM near the Grand Serail, the cabinet decided to meet on July 23 to discuss its working mechanism in the absence of a president. A high-ranking parliamentary source said that Hizbullah has also launched an initiative to resolve differences between its two allies – Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri who heads the Amal Movement. The source told al-Mustaqbal that Hizbullah is trying to convince Berri to add several draft-laws that are backed by the Change and Reform bloc to the agenda of a parliamentary session that he is seeking to call for. Aoun's lawmakers and other Christian blocs have said they would boycott any session which does not have on its agenda a draft-law on granting Lebanese expats the citizenship. Berri said on Sunday that it was important to hold an extraordinary parliamentary session to approve several draft-laws, including the Bisri dam, which when built would bring potable water to 1.8 million people in Lebanon. Parliament, which has been paralyzed since the term of President Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014, convenes twice a year in two ordinary sessions -- the first starts mid-march until the end of May and the second from the middle of October through the end of December. Berri needs the signature of several cabinet ministers to call for an extraordinary legislative session in the absence of a president.

Italian FM Concerned over Baabda Vacuum, Says Lebanon Can Preserve Coexistence
Naharnet/July 14/15/Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who is on an official visit to Beirut, has expressed concern over the presidential crisis in Lebanon. “A commitment to elect a president concerns all the Lebanese,” Gentiloni told An Nahar daily in an interview published on Tuesday. “Negotiations between all the political parties should continue to overcome this crisis,” he said. The Foreign Minister said that during his meeting with top Lebanese officials, he will “urge everyone to guarantee the full functioning of the Lebanese institutions.”Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Suleiman's six-year term ended in May last year. Differences between the March 8 and 14 alliances have left Baabda Palace vacant. The vacuum in the country's top Christian post has also caused a paralysis in parliament and huge differences among cabinet members. Asked about the threat of terrorism, Gentiloni said: “The battles being fought a few kilometers away from the Lebanese border (with Syria) and the huge pressure caused by the presence of Syrian refugees are the main factors of danger.”“But we still believe that Lebanon will be able to preserve its coexistence and democracy for its own interest and the interest of the region,” he told An Nahar. “I am here to stress our commitment and support (to Lebanon) at the security level or on humanitarian issues,” he added. Gentiloni met with Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Tuesday. He is expected to hold talks with Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Tammam Salam. The minister will also visit the South to inspect the Italian contingent operating within the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). “Italy's commitment through UNIFIL is part of our historic commitment to Lebanon's security since 1982,” Gentiloni told An Nahar. “We are very keen on preserving the peacekeeping mission and don't want to give up our contribution,” he said.

Top Syria Rebel Dead as Suicide Bombers Attack Ahrar al-Sham Base
Naharnet/July 14/15/A senior member of the Syrian Ahrar al-Sham rebel group was killed along with six other fighters on Tuesday in a double suicide bombing in northwestern Syria, a monitor said. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was believed to have been carried out by a group linked to the Islamic State group. The Britain-based monitor said seven members of Ahrar al-Sham, a conservative Islamist rebel group, were killed in the blast near the town of Salqin. Among them was Abu Abdel Rahman Salqin, described by Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman as "one of Ahrar al-Sham's most senior leaders." Ahrar al-Sham is one of the most powerful rebel groups in northern Syria and belongs to an alliance with al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front that has seized most of Idlib province in recent months. Despite its conservative ideology, Ahrar al-Sham is opposed to IS. In September 2014, 47 members of Ahrar al-Sham's leadership were killed when a blast hit a meeting of its top religious and military chiefs in Idlib. No group claimed responsibility for that bombing, which forced the group to quickly establish a new leadership. Ahrar al-Sham is one of the oldest and largest of Syria's armed opposition groups, established in 2011 by Islamists released by the Syrian regime early in the uprising against President Bashar Assad. Over the weekend, the group's foreign relations head wrote an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, criticizing U.S. policies towards Syria. Labib al-Nahhas accused Washington of too narrowly defining the term "moderate" and said Ahrar al-Sham had been "unfairly vilified."More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011./Agence France Presse

Iraq Seeks 'Uninterrupted' Turkish Military Support against IS
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/July 14/15/Iraq's foreign minister on Tuesday sought "uninterrupted" military support from neighboring Turkey in its fight against jihadists from the Islamic State group. "The presence of Daesh constitutes a threat not only to Iraq but also to countries in the region as well as Turkey," Ibrahim al-Jaafari told a joint news conference in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, using a pejorative name for IS. "We expect uninterrupted military support... from brotherly country Turkey," he said. "Cooperation will benefit us all."Iraq is battling to retake areas of the country overrun by IS militants. Authorities announced a major offensive on Monday to "liberate Anbar", a vast province that is largely under IS control. "Daesh must be wiped out," Jaafari said in remarks translated into Turkish. "In order to do this, we need arms and training ... There is a need for a well-trained soldiers and police," he added. "A hit-and-run war is taking place right now. You are not fighting a regular army. That's a difficult part of the business."Cavusoglu pledged Ankara's continuing support, saying the country had trained 1,600 peshmerga fighters from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region and that there were plans for Iraqi police to be trained in Turkey. "We have also provided Baghdad with some military assistance," he said, without elaborating. Turkey has faced international criticism for not doing enough to secure its border with Iraq and Syria, where jihadists have made large gains. A vocal critic of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Turkey fiercely rejects the accusations, saying it is making every effort to secure a long border. In turn, it has accused the West of failing to help shoulder the burden of the refugee crisis sparked by the war in Syria. Turkey is currently hosting some 1.8 million Syrian refugees.

Turkish authorities have arrested a number of suspected IS militants in recent months.
Agence France Presse/Agence France Presse/Turkey -- NATO's only majority Muslim member -- has stayed out of active participation in the anti-IS coalition led by its ally the United States assisting Kurdish forces in the fight against the jihadists. Analysts say Turkey remains reluctant to the U.S.-led campaign out of fears that the growing power of Kurdish forces will embolden its own 15-million strong Kurdish minority, and that jihadists could launch revenge attacks inside Turkey. Ankara, which has recently reinforced its military presence on the border with tanks, anti-aircraft missiles and additional troops, wants a wider strategy for Syria that would ultimately bring Assad's downfall. It has repeatedly called for a buffer zone to be put in place along the border, backed by a no-fly zone.

Kuwait Charges 29 over Suicide Bombing of Shiite Mosque
Agence France Presse/Agence France Presse/Kuwait charged 29 people Tuesday over the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque last month, claimed by the Islamic State group, that killed 26 people and wounded more than 200. The attack, carried out by a Saudi, was the worst in Kuwait's history. Those charged included seven Kuwaitis, five Saudis, three Pakistanis, 13 stateless people known as bidoons, and another person at large, the prosecution said, cited by the official KUNA news agency. Ot them, 24 are detained in Kuwait and the remaining five will be tried in absentia. Among the latter are two Saudi brothers who allegedly transported the explosives to Kuwait and are being held in Saudi Arabia. The prosecution charged two of the suspects with premeditated murder and attempted murder.
Two others were charged with training in the use of explosives, nine with assisting in committing the crime and the rest with knowing of the attack without informing the authorities.
An IS-affiliated group calling itself Najd Province claimed the bombing and also said it carried out suicide attacks at two Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia in May. IS considers Shiites to be heretics and has targeted them across the region. On Monday, the Kuwaiti cabinet decided to set up a permanent committee to "fight against all forms of terrorism... and extremism," and it will coordinate among various bodies in a bid to ensure security. Agence France Presse

Iraq Forces Pounding IS around Ramadi
Agence France Presse/Naharnet 14 July/15/Iraq's army and allied paramilitaries attacked Islamic State group positions around Ramadi Tuesday in their latest push to recapture the Anbar capital from the jihadists, commanders said. The authorities announced a major offensive to "liberate Anbar" on Monday, hours after the U.S.-led coalition launched a record number of air strikes near Ramadi. "The Iraqi army and the Hashed al-Shaabi are pounding IS positions with rockets and mortar rounds east, west and south of Ramadi," a senior army officer said. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar, a vast Sunni province which is largely under IS control. It is traversed by the Euphrates and stretches from the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the outskirts of Baghdad. Iraqi forces had resisted IS attacks for almost a year and half when they retreated in the face of a spectacular onslaught in mid-May, in a huge blow to the government. The government had to call in the Hashed, an umbrella organization whose main components are Tehran-backed Shiite militias, to supplement its own underperforming forces. Operations have been on ongoing across Anbar for months, and Iraqi forces have recently attempted to sever IS supply lines by moving in from provinces, including Salaheddin to the northeast. Officers said advances achieved on Monday would further isolate Fallujah, which lies about half way between Ramadi and Baghdad, and allow anti-IS forces to better organize supplies and reinforcements. Top commanders have admitted, however, that entering Ramadi and Fallujah, where U.S. forces faced their toughest battles during their eight-year occupation of Iraq, would be difficult. A senior officer in the police, which in Iraq takes part in military operations, said Iraqi units were currently advancing on Ramadi from three main axes. The U.S.-led coalition said it had carried out 29 air strikes against IS targets in the Ramadi region on Sunday, an unusually high number for a single area on a single day.

UAE Says Iran Deal May Turn 'New Page' for Gulf
Agence France Presse/Naharnet 14 July/15/The United Arab Emirates Tuesday welcomed the historic nuclear deal agreed by world powers and Iran, with an official saying it could turn a "new page" for the Gulf region. "Iran could play a (significant) role in the region if it revises its policy and stops interfering in the internal affairs of countries like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen," a UAE official said in the first reaction from the Gulf Arab monarchies to the Vienna accord. "The new direction we hope to see accompany the historic nuclear deal would demonstrate a genuine desire for Iran to help extinguish fires devouring the region," the official said. "This would move the region away from the discord of sectarianism, extremism and terrorism."Reached on day 18 of marathon talks in Austria's capital, the accord is aimed at resolving a 13-year standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions after repeated diplomatic failures and threats of military action. The UAE and the Islamic republic are in dispute over three small Gulf islands occupied by Iran, but the Sunni Muslim emirates still have good business relations with their Shiite neighbor. Like its Gulf Cooperation Council partners, including Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, the UAE has repeatedly expressed concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Abu Dhabi also fears that the Vienna agreement will strengthen Iranian influence in the region. A change of path by Tehran would send a "positive signal that would help the region avoid nuclear proliferation and all the risks this would involve for its security and stability," the Emirati official said. "Without such a change, we cannot build anything positive, and this will have consequences on the region and its people."The official WAM news agency said UAE leaders have congratulated Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, saying they hope the Vienna accord will "strengthen security and stability in the region."Agence France Presse

Assad Praises Iran Nuclear Deal as 'Great Victory'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet 14 July/15/Syrian President Bashar Assad congratulated key ally Iran Tuesday on reaching a nuclear deal with world powers, calling the agreement a "great victory". In a message to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Assad said he was "happy that the Islamic Republic of Iran has achieved a great victory by reaching an agreement", state news agency SANA reported. "In the name of the Syrian people, I congratulate you and the people of Iran on this historic achievement," he added in another message addressed to President Hassan Rouhani. Assad said the deal would be a "major turning point in the history of Iran, the region and the world." He added that it provided "clear recognition on the part of world powers of the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program, while preserving the national rights of your people and confirming the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran." "We are confident Iran will continue, and with greater momentum, to support the peoples' just issues and to work towards establishing peace and stability in the region and the world," Assad said. Syria's foreign ministry also welcomed the deal, which it said underlined "the importance of adopting diplomacy and political solutions to resolve international disagreements." Tehran is a longstanding ally of Damascus and has remained so since Syria's uprising began in March 2011. It has bolstered Assad's government with military and financial support, including a $1 billion (900 million euro) credit line approved by Syria's parliament on July 7. It is also a key ally of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, which has dispatched fighters to help Assad's forces battle the uprising. More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government demonstrations more than four years ago. Agence France Presse

Iran Deal: Potential to up Mideast Tensions or Mere Sideshow?
Agence France Presse/Naharnet 14 July/15/To critics, lifting sanctions on Iran under an historic deal reached Tuesday will help its ability to foment unrest in the Middle East, but some experts say the nuclear issue has become a sideshow to more immediate crises in the region.After years of negotiations, climaxing in an 18-day marathon in Vienna, world powers secured a deal with Tehran aimed at ensuring Iran does not obtain the nuclear bomb. Just a few years ago, Iran's nuclear program and fears of an arms race with its rivals in the Gulf were paramount issues. Many saw a deal as coaxing Tehran back into the diplomatic fold and easing tensions in the region. But since then, the Middle East has erupted with a string of wars and insurgencies that have muddled the situation on the ground. The West finds itself on the same side as Iran against the brutal militants of the Islamic State group in Iraq, even as they support opposing parties in the Syrian civil war next door. "The regional environment has become a lot more complex and it's only becoming more complex," said Shashank Joshi, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London. "Iran and the U.S. are both much more stretched than they were a few years ago and don't want any extra turbulence caused by the nuclear issue." The deal agreed Tuesday puts strict limits on Iran's nuclear activities for at least a decade.In return Iran will get sanctions relief although the measures can "snap back" into place if there are any violations. Many worry about what Iran will do with the windfall -- estimated at between $50 billion and $100 billion -- that will be unlocked when international sanctions are lifted. The White House argues Iran has too many problems at home to be throwing away cash on foreign trouble-making.
But critics of the deal, particularly Israel and its supporters in Washington, say the money will embolden an aggressive Iran.
"Iran seeks regional dominance," wrote former NATO Europe Commander James Stavridis in Foreign Policy magazine last month. "The next problem will be an ambitious and relatively well-funded nation with distinct ambitions in not only its region, but globally." Others dispute the portrayal of Iran as greedy for power, chomping at the bit to rebuild its ancient empire."The idea that Iran will put all its money into destabilizing activities abroad -- that's a caricature," said Simond de Galbert, a French diplomat who worked on the Iran negotiations and is now a visiting fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"Iran has been able to extend its influence mostly because the states in the region are weak -- the Syrian state has collapsed, the Iraqi state cannot look after its own security. The same is true in Yemen and to some extent in Lebanon," he said. There are still fears a deal could trigger an arms race, as Iran's rivals in the Gulf and beyond do not believe Tehran will end its perceived desire to get the nuclear bomb. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, swiftly reacting to the nuclear deal, called it "a historic mistake" and hinted he remained ready to order military action. The late Saudi king, Abdullah, bluntly warned a U.S. ambassador in 2009: "If they get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons." The agreement with Iran could prove a boon for the Gulf monarchies, allowing them to squeeze endless quid pro quos from Western countries, said Joshi. "You can never reassure allies enough. They will always want more, almost guilting them into it," he said. "But we'll also see hedging behavior from the Saudis. They have already been working more closely with Qatar and Turkey -- two countries they had previously been estranged from." The lifting of punishing economic sanctions, though not the embargo, will also allow Iran to resume oil exports. More Iranian oil, though, will add to a supply glut, which has already depressed prices. Prices fell quickly on U.S. markets Tuesday.While many have tried to paint the Iran deal as symbolic of a larger rapprochement with the West -- for good or ill -- those involved say the focus has never really gone beyond the narrow issue of nuclear weapons. "The sanctions were only ever about nuclear proliferation, and the agreement to lift them should only be judged on that basis," said De Galbert.
"If there's something problematic about Iran's wider actions in the region, we have to find another way to counter that."Agence France Presse

Iran, Major Powers Agree Historic Nuclear Deal
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/14 July/15
Major powers clinched a historic deal Tuesday aimed at ensuring Iran does not obtain the nuclear bomb, opening up Tehran's stricken economy and potentially ending decades of bad blood with the West. Reached on day 18 of marathon talks in Vienna, the accord is aimed at resolving a 13-year standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions after repeated diplomatic failures and threats of military action. It was hailed by Iran, the United States, the European Union and others but branded a "historic mistake" by the Islamic republic's archfoe Israel. U.S. President Barack Obama said the deal meant "every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off". "This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring real and meaningful change," he said in an address to the nation, with Vice President Joe Biden by his side. "This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it." He vowed to veto any Congressional effort to block the deal, reached between Tehran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. Underscoring the tectonic shift in relations, Iranian state television broadcast Obama's statement live, only the second such occasion since the Islamic revolution of 1979. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in his own live televised address that "God has accepted the nation's prayers".
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini described the deal as "a sign of hope" around the globe, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said the world had "breathed a huge sigh of relief".
Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran, also offered his congratulations.
The deal puts strict limits on Iran's nuclear activities for at least a decade and calls for stringent U.N. oversight, with world powers hoping this will make any dash to make an atomic bomb virtually impossible. In return Iran will get sanctions relief although the measures can "snap back" into place if there are any violations. The international arms embargo against Iran will remain for five years but deliveries would be possible with special permission of the U.N. Security Council, Moscow said. Tehran has accepted allowing the U.N. atomic watchdog tightly-controlled "managed access" to military bases, an Iranian official said. Tehran will slash by around two-thirds the number of centrifuges from around 19,000 to 6,104, an Iranian "fact sheet" confirmed. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif acknowledged that the agreement was "not perfect for anybody" but described it as "an important achievement".
Painful international sanctions that have slashed the oil exports of OPEC's fifth-largest producer by a quarter and choked its economy will be lifted and billions of dollars in frozen assets unblocked. The deal -- which was built on a framework first hammered out in April -- is Obama's crowning foreign policy achievement six years after he told Iran's leaders that if they "unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us". It also the fruit of Rouhani's attempts since his election in 2013 to end Iran's isolation 35 years after the Islamic revolution. The agreement may lead to more cooperation between Tehran and Washington at a particularly explosive time in the Middle East with the emergence last year of the Islamic State group, a common enemy, which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq. Erasing decades of hostility will be tough, though, as seen in Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's July 11 comments about U.S. "arrogance" and the burning of U.S. and Israeli flags last week.
The prospect of better U.S.-Iran relations alarms Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab states, which are deeply suspicious of Shiite Iran and accused it of stoking unrest in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.Israel, widely assumed to be the region's only nuclear-armed state and which has never ruled out bombing Iran, is also unsettled, seeing the deal as too weak to stop its arch foe getting the bomb. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called the deal "a historic mistake for the world".
"We did commit to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and this commitment still stands," he added in what was seen as a thinly veiled threat of preemptive strikes against Iranian nuclear sites. Many in the United States agree, not least Obama's Republican opponents who control Congress, which will have 60 days to review the agreement. During this time Obama cannot waive Congressional sanctions, which for Iran are the most painful.
The opponents, backed by legions of lobbyists, are set to launch an intense campaign to try and secure a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto and scupper the deal. Even if the agreement gets past Congress -- the Iranian parliament and the U.N. Security Council also have to approve it -- implementing the accord could be a rough ride. France said it expected U.N. Security Council approval "within days". The U.N. nuclear watchdog will have to verify that Iran does indeed scale down its facilities, clearing the way for the complex choreography of untangling the web of U.N., U.S. and EU sanctions. "I think there is a real risk that during the early phase of putting everything in place, that we'll see actions on both sides.. that will undermine the durability of an agreement," said Suzanne Maloney at the Brookings Institution.Agence France Presse

Netanyahu Says Israel Not Bound by Iran Deal, Will 'Defend Itself'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/14 July/15/Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday after world powers reached a historic nuclear deal with Iran that Israel was not bound by it and signaled he remained ready to order military action. Netanyahu's harsh criticism of the agreement came after he warned for months that the deal being negotiated would not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. While analysts say unilateral military action by Israel seems unlikely for now, Netanyahu and other officials have kept the option on the table. "Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran, and Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran because Iran continues to seek our destruction," Netanyahu told reporters before a meeting of his security cabinet. "We will always defend ourselves."
Netanyahu called the nuclear deal a "historic mistake", and the accord drew strong criticism from across the Israeli political spectrum. "We did commit to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and this commitment still stands," Netanyahu said earlier on Tuesday, even before the agreement was officially announced. He has taken his campaign to the U.S. Congress and the U.N. General Assembly, but ultimately failed to block the agreement. The deal puts strict limits on Iran's nuclear activities for at least a decade and calls for stringent U.N. oversight, with world powers hoping that this will make any dash to make an atomic bomb virtually impossible.
'Agreement is a tragedy'
In return, painful international sanctions that have slashed the oil exports of OPEC's fifth-largest producer by a quarter and choked its economy will be lifted and billions of dollars in frozen assets unblocked. "You can't prevent an agreement when those negotiating it are prepared to make more and more concessions to those shouting 'Death to the United States' even as the talks are in progress," Netanyahu said. "Iran will get hundreds of billions of dollars with which it will be able to fuel its terror machine," he said, referring to the expected lifting of sanctions. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon accused the six powers that negotiated the deal -- Britain, France, the United States, Germany, China and Russia -- of needlessly caving in to Tehran. "Iran, who arrived at the negotiating table in a weak position, has emerged victorious," he said. "Instead of fighting terror with all its might, the free world has granted legitimacy to Iran's hateful, murderous ways. This agreement is a tragedy for all who aspire for regional stability and fear a nuclear Iran." Late on Monday, Netanyahu even opened a Persian-language Twitter account, @IsraeliPM_Farsi, to rail against the deal in the hope of convincing the Iranian public.
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog said on his Facebook page that "Israel's interests have been abandoned."
'Pyromaniac with matches'
Science and technology minister Danny Danon said it was "not just bad for Israel, it's dangerous for the entire free world.""Giving the world's largest supporter of terrorism a free pass in developing nuclear weapons is like providing a pyromaniac with matches," he said in a statement. Deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely called the deal "a capitulation of historic proportions to the Iran-led axis of evil." "The implications of this agreement for the foreseeable future are very grave," she said. "The state of Israel will employ all diplomatic means to prevent confirmation of the agreement." In New York, World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder was more cautious. "We are still looking forward to getting all the details of this agreement, with the hope that the verification process will allow inspectors to determine Iran's true aims," the WJC quoted him as saying. "As the famous proverb goes, 'The road to hell is often paved with good intentions'."Agence France Presse

Loyalists Retake Airport in Yemen's Aden
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/14 July/15/Loyalists of Yemen's exiled president recaptured the airport in second city Aden Tuesday sealing a four-month battle with Iran-backed rebels with Saudi-led air and naval support, military sources said. Fighting in the port city escalated as U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon expressed disappointment over the failure of a U.N.-declared ceasefire to take hold over the weekend. The retreat by the Shiite rebels came as Iran -- regarded as their main foreign supporter -- struck a historic nuclear deal with world powers that was seen as bringing the main Shiite power in from the cold but setting limits to its regional ambitions. Leading Sunni power Saudi Arabia has been deeply concerned about Iranian influence in its impoverished southern neighbor and has led a devastating air campaign since March against the rebels and their allies in the armed forces. Saudi-led warships off the coast pounded the rebels as they pulled back from positions in Aden they had held since forcing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi into exile in Riyadh in March. Hadi was "personally supervising the operation" dubbed "Operation Golden Arrow for the Liberation of Aden," his chief of staff Mohammed Marem said.
Aden airport had been in the hands of the rebels since soldiers of the 39th Armored Brigade defected on March 25. The Huthi Shiite rebels and their allies have since gone on to seize the presidential palace and Aden's main commercial port. Military sources in Aden said pro-Hadi fighters were now benefiting from ground support from Yemeni forces recently trained in Saudi Arabia, in addition to sophisticated weapons delivered by the coalition. "Forces recently trained in Saudi Arabia are strongly participating in the fighting alongside the Popular Resistance," said one source, referring to the southern militia that have been the mainstay of support for Hadi so far. Retaking the airport of Aden is the first significant achievement for pro-Hadi fighters since the embattled president fled.
The rebels overran the capital Sanaa unopposed in September and went on to seize much of the rest of the country aided by troops still loyal to Hadi's ousted predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh. Aden's oil refinery -- Yemen's biggest -- was ablaze on Tuesday after being hit by rockets during the fighting for the city. Hadi loyalists blamed the rebels for the blaze. The rebels blamed a Saudi-led air strike. The fighting raged despite a U.N.-declared six-day ceasefire that was supposed to take effect shortly before midnight (2100 GMT) on Friday. The U.N. chief said he was "very much disappointed" by the failure of the truce but retained hope the fighting might still end, his spokesman said. He added: "We continue to reiterate our call for an unconditional humanitarian pause. "We have not lost hope and discussions are ongoing," Stephane Dujarric said. He also defended the decision to call the ceasefire, saying U.N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed "had received the commitments he felt were necessary for us to come out with this announcement". The United Nations has declared Yemen a level-3 humanitarian emergency, the highest on its scale, with nearly half the country facing a food crisis. More than 21.1 million people -- over 80 percent of Yemen's population -- need aid, with 13 million facing food shortages, while access to water has become difficult for 9.4 million people. The U.N. says the conflict has killed more than 3,200 people, about half of them civilians, since late March.. Agence France Presse''

Greece's Tsipras Rallies Political Support for Tough Bailout Terms
Agence France Presse/Naharnet 14 July/15/Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday battled to hold his ruling Syriza party together as opposition mounted to a shocking new bailout deal that requires Athens to push through draconian reforms within two days. With around 30 hardline Syriza lawmakers threatening to oppose the latest tough reforms demanded by Greece's international creditors, Tsipras faced the unenviable task of turning to pro-austerity opposition parties to push the deal through parliament by Wednesday. In the agreement struck Monday with the eurozone to prevent Greece crashing out of the euro, the Greek parliament must pass sweeping changes to labour laws, pensions, VAT and taxes.Only then will the 18 other eurozone leaders start negotiations over what Greece is to get in return: a three-year bailout worth up to 86 billion euros ($96 billion), its third rescue programme in five years.
With much of the party up in arms, Tsipras loyalists were hard at work on Tuesday to convince a sceptical party that the tough cuts could be softened through alternative measures. "I believe the people trust Tsipras and the government to remove these measures in the implementation phase, there can be policies that can cancel them out," said Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis. But a number of prominent leftists were refusing to budge. "I was elected on a platform of abolishing the bailout and its application laws," Syriza lawmaker and parliament vice-president Despoina Haralambidou told Vima FM radio. "The great majority of Syriza organisations oppose this agreement... in terms of labour and pension issues this is worse than the last two bailouts," she added. Syriza's junior coalition partner, the nationalist Independent Greeks party (ANEL) also said it would not approve the tough measures but would stay in the government. In Washington, the White House hailed the deal on Greece as "a credible step" on the long path to economic growth and debt sustainability in the hard-up country.
And French President Francois Hollande insisted there was no Greek humiliation in the deal struck in Brussels.
Tsipras has predicted "the great majority of Greek people will support" the deal, which he said includes help to ease Greece's huge burden of debt and revive its crippled banking system.
The last-ditch deal is aimed at keeping Greece's economy afloat amid fears its cash-starved banks were about to finally run dry and trigger its exit from the single currency.
'Humiliation and slavery' -
Many ordinary Greeks however are sceptical that the deal will bring about any improvement in their lives. Some expressed their anger on social media, where the Twitter hashtag #ThisIsACoup trended. Greece's public servants are also to stage a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, the first big stoppage since Tsipras took power. Haralambos Rouliskos, a 60-year-old economist, described the deal as "misery, humiliation and slavery".
The eurozone creditors "are trying to blackmail us," said Katerina Katsaba, a 52-year-old working for a pharmaceutical company.
Faced with a eurozone deeply distrustful of Athens after five months of tense meetings, the 40-year-old Tsipras had to agree to demands that critics say rob Greece of financial independence.
"This agreement may pass with (opposition party) votes, but it will never pass the people," the head of a hardline Syriza faction, Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, said.
If Greece passes it, Europe's next step would be to push the deal through several national parliaments, many in countries that are loath to afford Athens more help. Germany's Bundestag is likely to vote on Friday, provided the Greek parliament rushes through the four new market-oriented laws by Wednesday. Despite strong opposition, Tsipras also yielded to a plan to park assets for privatisation worth up to 50 billion euros in a special fund. Some 25 billion euros of the money in that fund will then be used to recapitalise Greece's cash-starved banks. There is also a pledge to reverse laws brought in by the Syriza government that run counter to Greece's earlier bailout arrangements in 2010 and 2012.
'No golden key'
The deal contains little mention of relieving a Greek debt mountain worth 180 percent of GDP -- a step recommended by the International Monetary Fund -- beyond a vague mention that it should be considered later. The eurozone must now unite to tackle the immediate problem of finding funds to keep Greece afloat as Athens faces several huge debt payments to the ECB and other creditors and the bailout could take weeks if not months to finalise.
Eurozone finance ministers were meeting Tuesday to consider bridge funding for Greece, but officials said there was no easy solution.The ECB meanwhile has kept Greek banks afloat -- barely -- with emergency liquidity, but has refused to provide extra funds. Banks will stay closed in Greece until Wednesday, the country's finance ministry said in a statement.Agence France Presse

Phares to Fox News: "The so-called deal now reached, will allow the regime to engage in further oppression internally"
Commenting on the early news around 4 AM EST Tuesday that a deal has been reached between Iran and the US, Dr Walid Phares said "the so-called deal now reached, will allow the regime to engage in further oppression internally." Phares said "on the one hand Iran is getting recognition, financial relief and ability to grow its military system, on the other hand the West is not getting an Iranian strategic change of behavior."
Phares to FBC: "Tehran wants to marry its nuclear capacity to its missiles fleet, it's clear"
In an interview with the Fox Business Channel Dr Walid Phares said that "Tehran wants to marry its nuclear capacity to its missiles fleet, it's clear. Hence the negotiations from an Iranian angle aren't about to eliminate their nuclear power, it is about receiving all the cash they can, saving the program, growing their military capacities and maintaining their influence in the region."
Phares, the author of "The Lost Spring" said "Iran's regime has a clear plan and it negotiate to attain clear goals. The Administration also has a plan but it is trying to pressure the Iranians not to complicate the talks and execute what they commit to."
It took two years before lawmakers, Think Tanks and media to understand that the real threat in the "Iran deal" is the insane amount of cash transferred under the pressure by Washington, to the Iranian regime. Why did it take two years for the opposition's elite to absorb this reality and start talking about it, only as the deal is entering its last stage is a mystery. We haven't left one opportunity during two years to warn about the actual real threat produced by the deal. The delay in understanding, accepting to address and finally opining on the issue on behalf of the opposition, is the actual strategic failure in Washington, not the Administration's relentless determination to conclude the deal with the Iranian regime.

Oil Prices Drop on Iran Deal
Agence France Presse/Naharnet 14 July/15/Oil prices fell Tuesday as Iran's deal with world powers on curbing the Islamic republic's suspected ambitions for a nuclear bomb is set to see crude added to an already oversupplied market. Analysts said the landmark agreement that will see sanctions lifted on Iran's oil exports, would put a lid on any rise in crude futures this year and in the future. On Tuesday, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in August shed 75 cents to stand at $57.10 a barrel in London afternoon deals.
U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate for August dropped $1.05 to $51.15 compared with Monday's close. "To be clear, the return of Iranian oil exports over the next year is one factor likely to keep oil prices low," said Thomas Pugh, commodities economist at consultants Capital Economics. "However, oil prices will also continue to be buffeted by changes in sentiment towards commodities in general, which have recently been influenced most by the gyrations in China's stock market," he added. Six world powers and Iran have formally concluded a historic deal aimed at ensuring that Iran does not obtain a nuclear bomb, the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini announced Tuesday. The accord is aimed at ending a 13-year standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions after repeated diplomatic failures and threats of military action. The deal puts strict limits on Iran's nuclear activities for at least a decade and calls for stringent UN oversight, with world powers hoping that this will make any dash to make an atomic bomb virtually impossible. In return, painful international sanctions that have slashed the oil exports of OPEC's fifth-largest producer by a quarter and choked its economy will be lifted and billions of dollars in frozen assets unblocked.
Lid on prices
Tuesday's drop in oil prices extended losses recorded a day earlier, in response "to the nuclear agreement... between the world powers and Iran", said analysts at Commerzbank in a note to clients. "If sanctions are eased, additional oil from Iran could reach the already oversupplied market," they added. Ahead, "the extent of the impact on oil prices will depend primarily on the domestic capability to get oil on the market", said Nina Skero, economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
"We expect Brent crude to recover somewhat from the price drop which followed today’s deal announcement and trade around $60 per barrel for the remainder of the year," she added. World oil prices collapsed by 60 percent between June 2014 and January when it hit a low of $45. This in part was owing to excessive supplies caused by the boom in U.S. shale oil. While OPEC on Monday revised upward its forecast for global crude oil demand growth for this year, it warned that crude output would also continue to increase. Iran's OPEC peers Saudi Arabia and Iraq "have both significantly ramped up production this year", noted Richard Mallinson, analyst at research group Energy Aspects. "There is little chance that these countries, and other OPEC members, are going to reduce output to make space for a return of Iranian production," he told Agence France Presse. "While the actual increase from Iran will only start next year, expect to see significant competition between sellers for market share, particularly in Asia."Agence France Presse

Merkel's Vice Chancellor Planning Iran Visit 'in near Future'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet 14 July/15/Germany's Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel plans to visit Iran soon, his ministry said Tuesday, hours after world powers and Tehran reached a historic nuclear deal. "There is great interest on the part of German industry in normalizing and strengthening economic relations with Iran, all the more so after today's agreement in the nuclear talks," his ministry told AFP in a statement. "That's why the ministry is considering an Iran trip in the near future," it said. The German Chambers of Commerce and Industry said its head Eric Schweitzer had been invited along on a trip from Sunday to Tuesday with Gabriel, who is deputy to Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as economy and energy minister. The agreement finalized in Vienna aims to ensure the Islamic republic does not obtain nuclear weapons and grants relief from crippling international sanctions to the energy-rich country of 78 million people. The deal reached by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany will lead to the lifting of sanctions that have slashed the oil exports of OPEC's fifth-largest producer by a quarter and unblock billions in frozen assets.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called it "a historic day for everyone who wants to see this dispute settled peacefully".Ulrich Grillo, head of the Federation of German Industries, said that as sanctions are lifted two-way trade between Germany and Iran could surge from 2.4 billion euros ($2.6 billion) last year to over 10 billion euros annually in coming years. Grillo pointed to pent-up demand in modernizing Iran's industrial infrastructure, especially in the oil industry, which he said offered "big market opportunities" for German engineering companies. He said German companies now needed ways to finance investments and do business in Iran, calling for the quick resumption in the country of the SWIFT banking network for international cash transfers. Iran has the world's fourth largest oil reserves and the second in gas, meaning it has the biggest combined energy deposits. Iran's oil ministry has announced it intends to attract up to $100 billion of foreign investment to modernize the sector, which has been underdeveloped for a decade. Agence France Presse

US Jewish liberal group J Street hails Iran nuclear deal, warns Congress
JPOST.COM STAFF/07/14/2015/The liberal Jewish lobby J Street on Tuesday praised the agreement struck between the major world powers and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. The lobby released a statement hailing the agreement as “meet[ing] the critical criteria for...a deal that verifiably blocks each of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon.” “We congratulate President Obama, Secretary Kerry and the other members of the P5+1 for having the resolve, determination, patience and persistence to bring such a difficult negotiation to a successful conclusion,” J Street said in a statement. The group warned Congress not to reject the agreement for fear of “the likely consequences - a collapse of diplomacy and international sanctions as Iran pushes forward with a nuclear program unimpeded.”
“Following our own review of the agreement, we expect to call on Congress to support the deal as the best - if not only - means of ensuring that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons,” J Street said.

Netanyahu says Iran nuclear deal 'a bad mistake of historic proportions'
HERB KEINON/07/14/2015/The Iran nuclear accord hammered out in Vienna between the world powers and Tehran is a “historic mistake” for the world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday. Netanyahu's comments came at the start of a meeting with visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders. Netanyahu, who said that he would relate to the details of the accord at a latter time, said that it is the result of wanting to reach an agreement “at any price.”The prime minister said that the powers negotiating with Iran – the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – made far reaching concessions on the areas meant to prevent Iran from ever being able to obtain nuclear arms. In addition, he said, Iran will receive “hundreds of billions of dollars” with which it will be able to fuel its terrorist activities and aggression in the region and around the world. “It is impossible to prevent an agreement when the negotiators are willing to make more and more concessions to those who chant ‘Death to America’ even during the negotiations,” he said.
Netanyahu said that because the government knew that the desire to reach an agreement was greater than anything else, it never committed itself to prevent the accord. “We did commit ourselves to preventing Iran from arming with nuclear weapons, and in my eyes that commitment still stands,” he said. The prime minister, coming under withering criticism from the opposition for what is being termed a colossal failure on his part to stop the agreement, called for Israel's political leaders to put party politics aside and unite around a most fateful issue for Israel's future and security.

Ya'alon says Iran nuclear agreement built on 'lies and deceit'
YAAKOV LAPPIN/07/14/2015/The agreement between world powers and Iran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program is built on "lies and deceit," Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said Tuesday, in the latest and most fierce criticism offered by him of the diplomatic process with Tehran to date. Speaking soon after news of the deal's conclusion was confirmed by negotiators, Ya'alon stated, Iran "arrived at the negotiating table in a weak position, and has emerged victorious. Instead of fighting terror with all its might, the free world has granted legitimacy to Iran’s hateful, murderous ways. This agreement is a tragedy for all who aspire for regional stability and fear a nuclear Iran." Ya'alon reiterated his warnings over the Islamic Republic regional aggression, describing it as "the world’s leading exporter of terror, maliciously involved in every angle of the Middle East conflict – either directly or indirectly, through its emissaries – undermining moderate Arab regimes, battling Israel and harming Western interests in the region." "This evil regime employs terror, funds terror, arms terror and disseminates terror across the world. The agreement signed with Iran will only serve to further support this bloody enterprise. With the implementation of the agreement and lifting of sanctions, massive funds will be funneled into the Iranian terror accounts – boosting its evil operations," he warned. The Vienna deal now enables Iran to consolidate its "sub-nuclear position, allowing it to breakthrough – at will – to full nuclear weapon capacity at no time, leaving no one who can stop them," he added. "Given its lack of moral restraints and extremist makeup, the Iranian regime is now in a stronger position to accelerate its regional and global threat through additional avenues, including its efforts to develop long range missiles targeted far beyond the Middle East," Ya'alon stated. "This agreement is bad. It rewards deceit, terror and war mongering. The mere thought of accepting the chief terrorist regime back into the family of nations is beyond belief," he concluded.

Obama: Iran deal cuts off all pathways to nuclear weapons
JPOST.COM STAFF/07/14/2015/US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that the agreement signed between Iran and world powers “cuts off all pathways to nuclear weapons.” Speaking at the White House hours after the deal was culminated, the US president hailed it as an example of “US leadership.”"Today after two years of negotiation the United States together with the international community has achieved something that decades of animosity has not: a comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon," the president said. “Because we negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons” in the Middle East, the president said. “The international community will be able to verify Iran will not be able to develop nuclear weapons,” Obama said. The president said the deal is effective since it requires Iran to take steps to curb its nuclear program before economic sanctions are lifted. The agreement “meets every single one of the bottom lines established” in the interim deal struck earlier this year, Obama said. The president said that the agreement compels Iran to eliminate most of its enriched uranium, leaving it with “just a fraction” of the raw materials needed to produce a bomb. Obama said the deal calls for limitations on Iranian stockpiles of uranium and plutonium. It also bans the Islamic Republic from constructing more heavy water reactors. The president said that the agreement stipulates reinforced sanctions in the event that Iran violates terms of the deal. Addressing the concerns of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the deal is "bad" for Israel, Obama vowed to continue to strengthen Israel's security.

Touting new role for Iran in the world, Rouhani targets Israel in remarks
MICHAEL WILNER/J.Post/07/14/2015/VIENNA -- The leaders of France, the United States and the European Union all hailed an historic nuclear agreement with Iran announced on Tuesday as an opening to cooperate with Tehran on a host of other matters concerning the Middle East and the West. But in order to harness that moment, world powers must reject Israel's efforts to thwart Iran's reintegration into the international community, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in an address televised live. Rouhani hailed the deal as a "win-win" opportunity for all parties involved in the talks. Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany, the US and Iran agreed on Tuesday on a plan of action to cap Tehran's nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief. The deal came to pass despite Israel's "best efforts" to prevent it, Rouhani said, criticizing the Jewish state's leadership of "propaganda."France's President Francoise Hollande suggested on Tuesday that the deal may provide an opportunity to coordinate with Iran toward a peaceful end to the Syrian war, which has claimed the lives of over 210,000 people. Iran supports the government of Bashar Assad, which has remained in power throughout a brutal civil war that began as peaceful protests against his rule."Now that Iran has a greater financial capacity, we need to be extremely vigilant on what Iran will be," Hollande said. "Iran must show that it is ready to help us end the conflict." But in a congratulatory message to Tehran, Assad said he was now confident "that the Islamic Republic of Iran will support, with greater drive, just causes of nations and work for peace and stability in the region and the world."At the White House, US President Barack Obama hailed the deal as a chance to change the long-wrought relationship between Iran and the United States. "Our differences are real and the difficult history between our nations cannot be ignored," Obama said. "But it is possible to change. The path of violence and rigid ideology, a foreign policy based on threats to attack your neighbors or eradicate Israel, that's a dead end." "A different path," he continued, "one of tolerance and peaceful resolution of conflict, leads to more integration into the global economy, more engagement with the international community and the ability of the Iranian people to prosper and thrive. This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it."

With this unnecessary crisis resolved, new horizons emerge,' Iran's Rouhani says
MICHAEL WILNER/07/14/2015/VIENNA - Iran's leadership and state-run media have embraced news of an historic nuclear agreement with world powers as a "good" deal for the Islamic Republic. The deal, according to local press, respects "red lines" in the negotiations set out by the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who said he would forbid international access to Iranian military sites just last month. "Constructive engagement works," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said with a message on Twitter. "With this unnecessary crisis resolved, new horizons emerge." Iranian press outlets said that the deal allowed Iran to retain all of its nuclear facilities. One such organization, IRNA, said "none will be stopped or eliminated;" that "Iran will continue enrichment" and that "research and development on key centrifuges will continue." In Vienna, preparing for a press conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the deal is "not perfect" but is nevertheless an "historic moment" for Iran and the West. And the European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the deal may hail a new chapter in international relations. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the deal a "mistake of historic proportions."

Obama’s Iran Deal Has the Makings of a Catastrophe
Daniel Pipes/National Review Online
July 14, 2015
http://www.danielpipes.org/15973/obama-iran-deal-catastrophe
Barack Obama has repeatedly signaled during the past six and a half years that that his No. 1 priority in foreign affairs is not China, not Russia, not Mexico, but Iran. He wants to bring Iran in from the cold, to transform the Islamic Republic into just another normal member of the so-called international community, ending decades of its aggression and hostility. Be the first of your friends to like this. In itself, this is a worthy goal; it’s always good policy to reduce the number of enemies. (It brings to mind Nixon going to China.) The problem lies, of course, in the execution.
The conduct of the Iran nuclear negotiations has been wretched, with the Obama administration inconsistent, capitulating, exaggerating, and even deceitful. It forcefully demanded certain terms, then soon after conceded these same terms. Secretary of State John Kerry implausibly announced that we have “absolutely knowledge” of what the Iranians have done until now in their nuclear program and therefore have no need for inspections to form a baseline. How can any adult, much less a high official, make such a statement?
The administration misled Americans about its own concessions: After the November 2013 Joint Plan of Action, it came out with a factsheet which Tehran said was inaccurate. Guess who was right? The Iranians. In brief, the U.S. government has shown itself deeply untrustworthy.
The agreement signed today ends the economic sanctions regime, permits the Iranians to hide much of their nuclear activities, lacks enforcement in case of Iranian deceit, and expires in slightly more than a decade. Two problems particularly stand out: The Iranian path to nuclear weapons has been eased and legitimated; Tehran will receive a “signing bonus” of some US$150 billion that greatly increases its abilities to aggress in the Middle East and beyond.
The United States alone, not to speak of the P5+1 countries as a whole, have vastly greater economic and military power than the Islamic Republic of Iran, making this one-sided concession ultimately a bafflement.
Of the administration’s accumulated foreign-policy mistakes in the last six years, none have been catastrophic for the United States: Not the Chinese building islands, the Russians taking Crimea, or the collapse into civil wars of Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. But the Iran deal has the makings of a catastrophe.
Attention now shifts to the U.S. Congress to review today’s accord, arguably the worst treaty not just in American history or modern history, but ever. Congress must reject this deal. Republican senators and representatives have shown themselves firm on this topic; will the Democrats rise to the occasion and provide the votes for a veto override? They need to feel the pressure.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2015 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Six world powers adopt nuclear deal with Iran
MICHAEL WILNER/J.Post/07/14/2015 13:44
VIENNA -- World powers have adopted a final, comprehensive agreement with Iran that will govern its nuclear program for over a decade. The deal culminates a two-year diplomatic effort in which the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, led by the United States, have sought to end a twelve-year crisis over Iran's suspicious nuclear work.Formally known as the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 100-page document amounts to the most significant multilateral agreement reached in several decades. Its final form is roundly opposed in Israel— by the government, by its opposition, and by the public at large.The JCPOA allows Iran to retain much of its nuclear infrastructure, and grants it the right to enrich uranium on its own soil. But the deal also requires Iran to cap and partially roll back that infrastructure for ten to fifteen years, and grants the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, managed access to monitor that program with intrusive inspections. In exchange, the governments of Britain, France, Russia, China, the US and Germany have agreed to lift all UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic— once Iran abides by a set of nuclear-related commitments. The moment Tehran receives sanctions relief— including access to an estimated $100 billion in frozen assets overseas— will be on "implementation day," as one senior administration official put it on Tuesday morning in Vienna. That date is not set, and is entirely reliant on the pace of Iran's initial haste in preparing for life under the deal. Once Iran has reduced its stockpile to just 300 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride, disconnected and removed some of its infrastructure and neutered its heavy-water plutonium reactor at Arak, the UN Security Council will vote to lift all sanctions at once.A Joint Commission has been established to adjudicate disagreements in the deal and, if necessary, vote to demand access to a specific site, or to request the reimposition of sanctions. The commission will be comprised of one delegate each from the permanent five members of the Security Council, Iran and the EU.
Negotiators failed to meet the standard of achieving "anytime, anywhere" access that several members of the United States Congress had demanded as a part of any nuclear deal. Instead, in the event Iran objects to an IAEA request for access to a specific site, a "clock" will begin that grants the two sides 14 days to negotiate.
If that period expires without any resolution reached directly between Iran and the IAEA, the Joint Commission would have seven days to advise them on a way forward. Iran would then have three days to comply with the commission's final advice, bringing the total time on the clock to 24 days.
Asked by The Jerusalem Post whether that met a standard of anytime, anywhere access, a senior administration official involved in the negotiations said it did not.
"We don't think that 'anytime, anywhere' inspections are feasible," the official said. "It's just not something that happens anywhere in the world."
Should Iran fail to comply with the commission's requests— or should it violate the deal in any other "significant" way— a majority can vote to refer the complaint to the full UN Security Council.
But the Security Council would not then vote to renew sanctions on Iran. Rather, it would be a vote to keep sanctions relief in effect— and would require just one permanent member's veto to end it.
That mechanism means that sanctions could snap back in place with action from the United States alone, the official noted.
Iran has agreed explicitly in the deal to "generally allow" IAEA access— wording sought by the US after Iran's history of generally rejecting such access. Tehran has also agreed to sign on to the IAEA's Additional Protocol, which broadens access, in a binding manner and in perpetuity.
"Above and beyond" its commitments made in a political agreement reached back in April, Iran has also agreed not to work on any technologies required for the construction of a nuclear warhead. That provision, US officials said, also does not have an expiration date.
Newly developed electronic seals will physically cap much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, and the IAEA will also use new, online enrichment measurements to monitor activity in the cascades of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to retain.
That number is small, but not zero: 5,060 centrifuges, first constructed in the 1970s, will be allowed to enrich uranium to a low grade at Natanz for the first decade of a deal.
The Arak installation will be converted into an altogether new design, based on conceptual models of a peaceful plutonium reactor that still uses heavy water. Outside of its April agreements, US officials say that Iran's heavy water stocks— stored in "beer kegs"— will also be monitored.
Not everything in the JCPOA will be made public, but the entire deal will be provided to Congress. "Everything that we know— that the administration knows— Congress will know," said a second senior American official.
The official was referring, in part, to the future of Iran's research and development into advanced centrifuges, beyond it 1970s models, as well as other equipment necessary for the construction of an industrial-sized nuclear program beyond 2025.
According to Western powers, the deal ensures that Iran cannot produce the materials necessary to build a nuclear weapon without the world having one year's notice. That, among non-proliferation experts, is colloquially referred to as "breakout time."
But that standard sunsets in ten years. After a decade, officials could not say how Iran's program would develop.
The future outlook of Iran's program, one US official said, is a matter between Iran and the IAEA.
"We don't know everything that's going to be in Iran's enrichment and R&D plan, and we have not negotiated the whole plan with Iran," the official said. "Its difficult for us to know exactly what that plan is going to say and therefore difficult for us to know exactly what that breakout time limits will diminish to."
The IAEA's investigation into Iran's military nuclear work, according to US officials, will have to be addressed to the IAEA's satisfaction before sanctions are relieved. But the details of that query, similarly, will be for the IAEA and Tehran to sort out for themselves.
In a prepared statement released on Tuesday morning, IAEA director general Yukiya Amano said that all of the agency's outstanding questions— on issues past and present— must be resolved by October 15 of this year. A final report will be prepared by December.
Amano announced a "roadmap" for the resolution of the IAEA's decade-long quest for answers to just twelve questions on the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program. The roadmap "will continue to take into account Iran's security concerns," it reads. Iran's atomic energy chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, signed the roadmap document.
Final negotiations toward the deal slogged through eighteen days in Austria's capital. And the technical task of precisely translating the text, and of reviewing each provision, held up announcement of the deal on Monday.
But it was that morning when Federica Mogherini, the European Union's foreign policy chief and coordinator of the talks, began her morning meeting with her colleagues with news that the process could not go on any longer. They agreed to push through to the finish line, and the hardest talks took place on that day, an official close to the process said.
Obama spoke with Kerry and his team just before midnight that evening. White House officials tell the Post that the president remained in constant contact with the US delegation on the ground.
The final issue that challenged negotiators was language of a UN resolution that details the expiration of an embargo on conventional arms.
The US agreed to allow the embargo to expire in five years, and to allow another embargo on missiles to expire in eight years.
The agreement came midday. "There wasn't this triumphalist celebration," the official added. "People were pretty tired."
Toward midnight on Monday, various delegations began scheduling media interviews and preparing their press corps for an announcement ceremony at the city's Austria Center, outside the heart of the city.
Earlier in the day, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the Obama administration was "going to have a lot of confidence in our ability to advocate for this agreement," after several Republican senators alleged the deal would be a "hard sell" on Capitol Hill.
The deal now goes to Congress for a 60-day review period. The US legislature will then have the opportunity to hold a non-binding vote to approve or disapprove of the deal.
Both Kerry and Zarif took time for prayer during their prolonged stays in Vienna. Iran's delegation marked Ramadan with a night at Imam Ali, an Islamic center, on July 6, one night before the second of four total deadlines; And Kerry attended a Sunday mass at the city's central Stephansdom on Sunday, July 12, just hours before the deal was ultimately sealed.
Their teams here are large, with heavy portfolios and massive hotel bills: Even before Kerry and Zarif arrived on June 26, their delegates had been on the ground, preparing the historic text as a basis for high-level political discussions.
Hundreds of journalists descended on this city for the original deadline for a final deal of June 30. Many remained, working out of a tent erected by the Austrian government just outside the palace where talks are taking place.
In one form or another, Iran has maintained a nuclear program for nearly half a century. But the international community grew alarmed with its nuclear work in 2002, when two covert facilities— a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy-water plutonium facility at Arak— were discovered by Western intelligence agencies and revealed to the world.
While there are several ways to produce nuclear power that are exclusively peaceful, Natanz and Arak were two hallmark facilities built for the production of fissile material necessary for nuclear weapons. Talks between Iran and three European nations— Britain, France, and Germany— began the following year, as the US was launching its second war in Iraq. Berlin's participation in this early round of nuclear talks has reserved it a spot at the negotiations to this day. But the efforts of the "E3," as they were known, failed, and Iran dramatically expanded its nuclear program to include a vast and dispersed domestic enrichment infrastructure. That enrichment continued despite several demands from the UN Security Council to halt enrichment completely. And Tehran suspended its participation in the Additional Protocol, refusing to answer any more of the IAEA's many questions after 2006.
Another covert facility, this one burrowed inside a mountain near Iran's holy city of Qom, was uncovered in 2009. The UN Security Council passed a total of eight sanctions resolutions against Iran by 2010. Washington already had a harsh sanctions regime leveled against Iran for a series of other, non-nuclear activities, including its violations of human rights and its sponsorship of terrorism worldwide. But that sanctions architecture was expanded dramatically in the following years, compounded by a sweeping oil embargo imposed by the EU.
Iran was then cut from Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, better known as SWIFT, which made basic transactions a struggle for the theocratic government. Iran will be permitted to begin using SWIFT once again, after the deal is fully implemented.
"That will be a significant driver of their economic improvement," the official said.
The diplomatic effort which concluded on Tuesday began in secret, in the Omani capital of Muscat, directly between Iran and the US in 2013. Washington's goal was to lay the groundwork for high-level dialogue, and it worked: Just months later, Obama made a phone call to Rouhani from the Oval Office. It was the first exchange of its kind in 34 years. Among those representing the US in Oman was Wendy Sherman, who has led the talks ever since, and Jake Sullivan, now chief foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Obama would ultimately continue his direct diplomacy through written correspondence, with the supreme leader, on several occasions over the life of the talks. In Geneva that November, the US, Iran and its international partners agreed to freeze the crisis with a "joint plan of action." The interim JPOA effectively capped Iran's nuclear work as well as the imposition of new sanctions. But the hard talks began after the 2013 holiday season in Vienna, at the Palais Coburg, a luxury hotel with only sixteen rooms just off the city's famous, tree-lined ring. The negotiations have now ended here, as well, in its gilded, blue-upholstered rooms overlooking the city's Theodor Herzl Square. Different cities hosted the talks over the last two years, but negotiators mostly alternated between Geneva— where the United Nations is headquartered— and Vienna, where the IAEA is based. The talks were occasionally diverted further along the coast of Europe's largest lake to the resort city of Lausanne, and as far as to Montreux, at the foot of the Swiss Alps. It was at the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne— after another marathon of talks, which included the longest-running meeting between a sitting US secretary of state and a counterpart in recorded history— where negotiators reached a series of core political agreements. Those agreements were meant to ultimately frame a final deal.
But the framework was ultimately an agreement in principle, and not one in writing: There was no shared text, and the written parameters released from the White House and Tehran did not perfectly match. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei initially opposed the phasing of a deal. He sought a single, final agreement, which would lay out all commitments and prompt immediate sanctions relief for his country. The deal ultimately reached on Tuesday is a Western victory over Khamenei's preferences, at least on process matters: The understanding reached in Lausanne has, indeed, framed a final agreement, which will be executed in phases. Those phases begin with its immediate adoption on Tuesday, logistical preparation beginning tomorrow, and its full implementation at a later date.

Iran crowned as top regional, nuclear-threshold power. Win for Obama, fiasco for Netanyahu
DEBKAfile Special Report July 14, 2015/In broad lines, the final nuclear deal, reached Tuesday, July 14, between six world powers and Iran - after a decade of on-and-off negotiations and repeated hold-ups - grants Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. How quickly the sanctions are lifted and the exact nature of the curbs is detailed in the final version of the nuclear accord when it is released. In the view of debkafile’s analysts, the accord is a major milestone in President Barack Obama’s drive to orient US foreign policy on a rapprochement with Iran (followed by Cuba), while turning a cold shoulder to America’s two traditional Middle East allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. It anoints Tehran as the region’s leading power standing on the threshold of a nuclear weapon.
The foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia met for an hour after midnight for a last push to get the final text agreed. The last sticking points were Iran’s last-minute conditions for a deal: the immediate lifting of the UN Security Council embargo on Iran’s buying and receiving arms and the ban on its ballistic missile program. Lifting the embargo would permit Iran to freely arm US-designated terrorist groups like Hizballah and Hamas, as well as Yemeni rebels. Russia and China, as arms suppliers to Tehran, backed Iran on this issue.
The agreement reportedly imposed a 10-year limit on Iran’s nuclear work and was calculated to delay nuclear breakout by one year. A diplomatic source told Reuters that a UN Security Council resolution would be sought this month to confirm Iranian curbs on its nuclear program and relief from sanctions to be implemented in the first half of 2016. The source said Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency had agreed on a plan for addressing unanswered questions about the suspected military dimensions of past Iranian nuclear activity by the end of 2015. He said that some sanctions relief was conditional on Tehran resolving this issue. According to one of the last drafts of the accord, Iran has agreed to one visit to the Parchin military complex, where Iran is suspected of nuclear detonation testing, and possible interviews with Iranian nuclear scientists. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has strongly banned both those steps. It is not clear how that issue was finessed in the final text. The agreement now goes before the legislatures of the signatories. US Congress has 60 days to review the deal, with President Barack Obama faced with a hard sell in the Senate of am accord which he and Secretary of State John Kerry have fought for without quarter, and which many US lawmakers like Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu have denounced as “a bad deal.”
The Iranians will keep the US on the hot plate even after the signing celebration.
The Majlis in Tehran will be asked to enact a law requiring the accord to be reviewed every few months and the power to annul it if the US does not pass the Iranian lawmakers’ test of compliance. Khamenei this week denounced America as the “embodiment of global arrogance” - disregarding months of the close collaboration of Iran’s wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen with the Obama administration. Indeed, American officers are running the war on the Islamic State in Iraq in close sync with Iranian Revolutionary Guards commanders. Washington moreover withholds large-scale arms from Syrian rebels out of consideration for Tehran’s ally Bashar Assad. When Saudi civilians are put to flight by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel missiles, the Obama administration looks the other way.
The situation in these war arenas poses an even greater threat than the deal signed in Vienna Tuesday. Even if Iran does give way on inspections at Parchin and even if every last sanction is lifted by 2016, the deal pales in comparison to the turmoil in the region largely instigated byTehran and Iran's promoption on the world stage . Anyway, many of the sanctions have been quietly lifted to win Iran’s acquiescence to the talks. Iran has never interrupted its development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
For Obama, this is a big win, just as it is a major fiasco for Binyamin Netanyahu. The US president’s maneuvers for six years managed to hold off Israeli military action to cripple Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity. Now, after the conclusion of an international accord that leaves Iran’s nuclear program intact, the military option is a non-starter – at least for the near future.

Analysis: Israel's military option won't vanish in a post-Iran deal era
YAAKOV LAPPIN/07/13/2015
Israel's defense establishment is quietly monitoring every development in the nuclear talks between world powers and Iran, and any forthcoming deal will be subject to the most intense scrutiny.
The final form of a nuclear deal will influence Israeli military plans for the possibility of, one day, receiving an order from the cabinet to launch an assault on the Iranian nuclear program. This is a capability that Israel has no intention of forfeiting, even in a post-deal era.
The IDF will need to set aside considerable defense budget funds in the forthcoming multi-year military plan, dubbed Gideon, to continue to build on its long-range strike options.
According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has not given up on his goal of possessing nuclear weapons. Yet, constraints posed by a complex reality have forced Khamanei to delay this goal, at least for the time being.
Hence, the first conclusion one can draw is that a nuclear deal does not mean Iran has given up on nuclear weapons as a goal, but also, that an arrangement, even a poor one, could result in a short-term decrease of the threat of Iran breaking out to the weapons production stage. As a result, the option of a military strike remains firmly on the table, but does not appear to be imminent, since only an Iranian attempt to break through to the nuclear weapons stage can trigger an Israeli attack.
Over the past year, Israel has not detected an active nuclear weapons project in Iran.
What is active in Iran is a large-scale uranium enrichment program, based on a relatively high number of spinning centrifuges.
Additionally, Iran continues to make progress in research and development of more advanced enrichment techniques.
The Iranian missile arsenal, which could act as a delivery mechanism for a future nuclear weapon, is expanding. Iran has hundreds of liquid fuel missiles that can strike Israel and parts of Europe, and it is working on solid fuel missiles for much longer strike ranges.
Senior Israeli defense sources hold that in the short term, a combination of intelligence monitoring and intrusive international inspections could actually result in a decrease of the threat from Iran.
It seems, however, that the deal being put together in Vienna now falls short of ensuring adequate inspections, meaning that intelligence will play a crucial role as a tool that can deliver a warning of an Iranian breakout attempt. Iran could reactivate the nuclear weapons project at any time.
The reason the nuclear deal is bad is because it leaves too much enrichment capability in Iranian hands and infrastructure that can lead to nuclear weapons in the future. A good agreement would have ensured that Iran would not possess enrichment abilities for many years.
Instead, Iran is left with a high number of centrifuges and no guarantee that these won't be diverted into a nuclear weapons production drive in the future. That is bad news for Israel, the region, and for international security.
The Iranian regime continues to officially call for Israel's destruction, and so long as Tehran retains a basis from which it could one day build nuclear weapons, the defense establishment will retain its ability to intervene, if ordered to do so.
In the meantime, the IDF and intelligence agencies will have their hands full with Iran's regional subversive activities and aggression, and its weapons and funding network, for Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Islamic Republic's many activities in Syria.

Iran deal could lead to improved covert Arab-Israel cooperation
ARIEL BEN SOLOMON/07/13/2015/If a nuclear deal is reached between world powers and Shi’ite Iran, it could stimulate covert cooperation between Israel and Sunni Arab states.However, such improved coordination would not come as a result of any real inherent change in relations between Israel and Arab countries, but because of realpolitik.Moreover, any concrete coordination would be discreet so as not to create a backlash against cooperative Arab governments. Mordechai Zaken, an Israeli expert of minorities in the Middle East and a former Arab affairs adviser to the Prime Minister’s Office, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that when it comes to the Arab world and Israel, there is “no love, only interests.” Even if a deal is reached, he said, the Arabs are not going to attack Iran, but would be happy if Israel does. “At the end of the day, most of these Arab countries would not have been happy to declare and expose their relations or cooperation with Israel,” continued Zaken, adding that “in the Middle East, it is not something to brag about.”
In recent years, Israeli officials have met counterparts from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf at nuclear non-proliferation talks in Switzerland, gatherings the Israelis say have helped melt a certain amount of ice. There have also been meetings between recently appointed director-general of Israel's foreign ministry Dore Gold, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and retired Saudi general Anwar Eshki, an informal effort to see where the two countries' interests coincide, especially on Iran.
They appeared together at a Washington conference last month, but took no questions. Referring to this public event, David Andrew Weinberg, a specialist on Gulf affairs and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Post on Monday that his understanding from news reports is that it was totally unofficial. “It was woefully underreported in Saudi Arabia compared to the coverage in Israel and the US and appears to have had no measurable impact upon policy,” said Weinberg.
“Saudi Arabia’s state news wire still calls Israel an ‘enemy’ and hardline religious preachers embraced at the highest levels in places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar continue to preach absolutely vile hatred toward Jews and toward Israel and yet receive state perks,” he noted.
“Even Israel’s public interest sections in the Gulf are today a thing of the past. So in that regard, the relationship has taken a step backwards in the last two decades, not a step forwards.”“Sure, there is security coordination and intel sharing behind the scenes, specifically on the issue of Iran and its regional proxies, but that’s been going on for at least a decade,” he continued. “And who knows, maybe the Saudis would let Israel use its airspace for strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites if it ever came to that, but there’s no secret broader alliance at play here,” said Weinberg. The Gulf states simply aren’t ready to publicly normalize with Israel barring a peace deal with the Palestinians, he argued, and possibly not even then. And within the context of the greater Sunni-Shi’ite regional power struggle, an Iranian rapprochement with the West would tip the balance of power in Iran’s favor as it gains an economic windfall from the loosening of sanctions and increased trade. The new legitimacy that a deal would provide Iran would allow it to expand its influence in the region beyond the four Arab capitals that it already has decisive control: Damascus, Beirut, Saana, and Baghdad. Therefore, any deal is likely to lead to an escalation of the regional sectarian wars. Reflecting the increasing Arab anxiety over the Iran deal, an article by Sharif Nashashibi published on Al-Arabiya’s website on Monday titled “Preparing for the fallout from Iran’s nuclear deal,” argued that the outcome of the deal would affect Saudi Arabia even more than Israel. Nashashibi says that “the biggest regional fallout will be felt with regard to relations between Tehran and Riyadh, which are currently facing off in proxy wars to a greater extent and on more fronts than is the case with the Israeli-Iranian rivalry.” The “escalation and widening of Saudi-Iranian rivalry in recent years may pale in comparison with what will follow a nuclear deal and Tehran’s subsequent rehabilitation,” he added.Reuters contributed to this report.

Iran deal could lead to improved covert Arab-Israel cooperation
ARIEL BEN SOLOMON/J.Post//07/13/2015
If a nuclear deal is reached between world powers and Shi’ite Iran, it could stimulate covert cooperation between Israel and Sunni Arab states. However, such improved coordination would not come as a result of any real inherent change in relations between Israel and Arab countries, but because of realpolitik. Moreover, any concrete coordination would be discreet so as not to create a backlash against cooperative Arab governments. Mordechai Zaken, an Israeli expert of minorities in the Middle East and a former Arab affairs adviser to the Prime Minister’s Office, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that when it comes to the Arab world and Israel, there is “no love, only interests.” Even if a deal is reached, he said, the Arabs are not going to attack Iran, but would be happy if Israel does.
“At the end of the day, most of these Arab countries would not have been happy to declare and expose their relations or cooperation with Israel,” continued Zaken, adding that “in the Middle East, it is not something to brag about.”In recent years, Israeli officials have met counterparts from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf at nuclear non-proliferation talks in Switzerland, gatherings the Israelis say have helped melt a certain amount of ice. There have also been meetings between recently appointed director-general of Israel's foreign ministry Dore Gold, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and retired Saudi general Anwar Eshki, an informal effort to see where the two countries' interests coincide, especially on Iran. They appeared together at a Washington conference last month, but took no questions.
Referring to this public event, David Andrew Weinberg, a specialist on Gulf affairs and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Post on Monday that his understanding from news reports is that it was totally unofficial. “It was woefully underreported in Saudi Arabia compared to the coverage in Israel and the US and appears to have had no measurable impact upon policy,” said Weinberg. “Saudi Arabia’s state news wire still calls Israel an ‘enemy’ and hardline religious preachers embraced at the highest levels in places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar continue to preach absolutely vile hatred toward Jews and toward Israel and yet receive state perks,” he noted.“Even Israel’s public interest sections in the Gulf are today a thing of the past. So in that regard, the relationship has taken a step backwards in the last two decades, not a step forwards.”
“Sure, there is security coordination and intel sharing behind the scenes, specifically on the issue of Iran and its regional proxies, but that’s been going on for at least a decade,” he continued. “And who knows, maybe the Saudis would let Israel use its airspace for strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites if it ever came to that, but there’s no secret broader alliance at play here,” said Weinberg. The Gulf states simply aren’t ready to publicly normalize with Israel barring a peace deal with the Palestinians, he argued, and possibly not even then. And within the context of the greater Sunni-Shi’ite regional power struggle, an Iranian rapprochement with the West would tip the balance of power in Iran’s favor as it gains an economic windfall from the loosening of sanctions and increased trade.
The new legitimacy that a deal would provide Iran would allow it to expand its influence in the region beyond the four Arab capitals that it already has decisive control: Damascus, Beirut, Saana, and Baghdad.Therefore, any deal is likely to lead to an escalation of the regional sectarian wars. Reflecting the increasing Arab anxiety over the Iran deal, an article by Sharif Nashashibi published on Al-Arabiya’s website on Monday titled “Preparing for the fallout from Iran’s nuclear deal,” argued that the outcome of the deal would affect Saudi Arabia even more than Israel. Nashashibi says that “the biggest regional fallout will be felt with regard to relations between Tehran and Riyadh, which are currently facing off in proxy wars to a greater extent and on more fronts than is the case with the Israeli-Iranian rivalry.”The “escalation and widening of Saudi-Iranian rivalry in recent years may pale in comparison with what will follow a nuclear deal and Tehran’s subsequent rehabilitation,” he added.
**Reuters contributed to this report.

Analysis: 30-year journey to stop Iranian nukes may soon move to Congress
HERB KEINON/07/14/2015
Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for most of the last three decades.
The quest began at the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 when the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, famously “drank from the poisoned chalice” and accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598, which put an end to that eight-year, blood-drenched war. Never again, Khomeini vowed, would Iran drink such poison, and the country’s race for nuclear arms – something that would have precluded the need for what Khomeini viewed as a capitulation – was on.
During the last nearly 30 years, the world – with varying degrees of seriousness and intensity – has tried to block that path.
The strategy during much of that time period has been to kick the can down the road, delay the Iranians, place impediments in their way in the hope that in the interim something would happen: either there would be regime change in Iran, or the Iranian rulers – of their own accord or because of popular unrest – would come to realize that the price of a nuclear bomb was too high and that if they wanted to save the country’s economy they would have to scuttle the bomb.
So, during this period, viruses were sent to infect the Iranian computers, some Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers were assassinated or mysteriously disappeared, and straw companies were set up around the world selling faulty material to the mullahs so that when they spun their centrifuges, the centrifuges would blow up.
The accord on the verge of being agreed upon in Vienna, the one Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has railed against endlessly, buys the Iranians more time.
Ten years of it.
During this period, the Iranians will be hard-pressed to assemble a nuclear bomb.
But then the sun will set on the agreement and all bets will be off.
Then, the Iranians, according to Israel’s reading of the deal, will not have to sneak around to assemble a bomb. They will be able to do so in broad daylight.
And therein is one of Israel’s key complaints.
At a time when the Iranians came to the talks because their economy was being devastated, the world powers had the opportunity not to just kick the can down the road, but rather to kick it over the fence, deep, deep into one of the neighbor’s bushes.
Or, to use a boxing metaphor, two years ago the world powers had Iran on the ropes – its economy badly limping, oil prices falling, its legitimacy at a low point.
But instead of ratcheting up the sanctions and delivering a knockout blow, the powers let Iran slither off the ropes to come back and fight another round.
And fight they did. As Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was reported to have said over the weekend, “Twenty-two months of negotiation means we have managed to charm the world, and it’s an art.”
That was then. Now the reality has changed. So, now what? The agreement has pretty much put to an end to any option of a preemptive Israeli military strike. Few seriously believe Israel would launch a preemptive attack on Iran to push back the program after that country reached an agreement with the world powers, including the US.
It is also equally unrealistic to think Netanyahu – who has fought the Iranian nuclear program for years – will now suddenly roll over, play dead and say, “Okay, you win, I guess now we will just have to accept a nuclear Iran.”
Netanyahu – who has charged that this is a “very bad agreement,” and that what happened in Vienna was a foolish “march of concessions” that amounted to a near total capitulation to Tehran – will not now throw up his arms in surrender.
Rather, now his arguments against the accord will move to Congress, the last place where changes in the agreement might possibly still be made. If then ambassador Michael Oren – as he writes in his recent memoir – was given instructions to call congressmen in 2011 and say “Israel felt abandoned” after US President Barack Obama delivered a speech adopting an Israeli-Palestinian deal based on the 1967 lines with land swaps, then one can only imagine what Oren’s successor, Ron Dermer, will tell the congressmen when he calls about this agreement.
And that type of campaigning in Congress against a policy that Obama sees as his foreign policy “legacy,” and which US Secretary of State John Kerry views as his possible Nobel Prize winning ticket, is not bound to win Netanyahu any points in the White House, where his credit is already depleted.
The final year of the Obama-Netanyahu era, therefore, most likely will be more fraught than even the seven years that came before.
But Netanyahu will go ahead – feeling duty-bound as a son of the Jewish people so soon after the Holocaust and as the prime minister of the world’s only Jewish state – to do whatever he can to try and override the agreement. If not to stop it, at least to change it so that when the history books are written it will be noted that he – alone among the world’s leaders – fought until the very end an accord that ultimately may place the world’s most lethal weapons into the hands of one of the world’s most extreme regimes.

Analysis: Nuclear deal not perfect, but the skies are not going to fall tomorrow
YOSSI MELMAN/07/14/2015
In 2007, a senior Israeli cabinet minister told senior military officials that if a country wants nuclear weapons nothing will stop it.“I know at least one country that did it,” he remarked in response to their agreed upon strategy to do everything to keep Iran from getting the bomb. Instead, he advised them to focus on delaying the nuclear program and to ask the US to be handsomely compensated.
Eight years later, when it seems that only a miracle will prevent a nuclear deal between the six super powers and Iran in the Vienna talks, one can say that due to its successful diplomacy, sabotage and assassination operations attributed to Mossad and its demand to impose sanctions, Israel managed to prevent Iran from reaching the bomb.
It seems, though, that what Iran really wanted was to be a nuclear-threshold state and not to assemble warheads.
Of course, Israel was not alone in these efforts; it was an impressive international concert that presented a unified front.
Another Israeli government could have appropriated the nuclear agreement as its victory – as a result of wise diplomacy combined with daring covert actions, Iran was brought to its knees and forced it to sit down, negotiate and compromise on its nuclear program, something Tehran had refused to do from 2002 to 2013.
The pending deal will lengthen Iran’s capability to have fissile materials and produce a bomb to at least one year for at least the 10-year term of the agreement.
It’s estimated that before Iran agreed to talk and clinch the interim agreement it was just two to three months from the bomb. The number of centrifuges of the old and outdated models at the uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow will be reduced to a third of the current inventory to 6,000 from 19,000.
Iran is forbidden to enrich uranium above 3.6%; its enriched uranium will be dwindled from 10 tons to a mere 300 kg.; and the nuclear reactor in Arak will be redesigned and won’t be able to produce sufficient plutonium as fissile material.
As for international inspection, even if it is not insufficiently intrusive, it still will be tighter than it is now.
If Iran honors the deal, the chance of a nuclear race in the Middle East by countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey will be slimmer.
But Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has decided to take a different path. Instead of working hand in hand with the international effort to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and claiming victory, it has preferred to be left alone.
Israel is opposed to the agreement. To any agreement.
Netanyahu tried to create a wedge between the US president and Congress and failed.
Israel exaggerated the Iranian threat and portrayed it in monstrous proportions.
Netanyahu said Monday night that Iran not only aspires to impose it hegemony in the region, but to control the entire world.
True, it would have been better without a deal in the first place. As far as Israel is concerned, it was preferred that sanctions remain forever.
But Israel is not the center of the universe – the big powers have their own interests and sometimes they don’t listen to the Jewish state’s warnings, just as Israel, in many instances, is not attentive to requests from other nations, including its allies; for example, the Palestinian question.
The nuclear deal in the making is far from perfect, but the skies are not going to fall tomorrow.
Israel remains the strongest and most technologically advanced state in the Middle East. And, according to foreign reports, it has an impressive arsenal of nuclear warheads.
It is also true that lifting the sanctions will help revive the Iranian economy. But, according to estimates by US economists, the recovery will be slow.
It is very unlikely that a dramatic shift in Iran’s rush for a regional hegemony will be seen. Its ambition is already high.
The deal will not increase Iran’s grip on Hezbollah, which is already full. Its support for terrorist groups and its subversive attempts to undermine and destabilize countries will not necessarily be enhanced. They are already in full gear.
These efforts, after all, are a double-edged sword – the more Iran intervenes in other countries’ domestic problems, the likelier it will be bleeding itself. Look at what happens to Iran in the Syrian mud, Yemenite slippery slopes and Iraq.
It is rather surprising to hear our leaders expressing fears about what will happen upon expiration of the agreement 10 years from now when they cannot say what will occur two or three months down the road on our borders with Gaza, Golan, Sinai or Lebanon.
All in all, it is possible to estimate that at least two tangible results will emerge from the nuclear deal – the military- security establishment will demand that its budget be expanded and Israel will ask the US to supply it with a security compensation package, exactly as the cabinet minister suggested eight years ago.

John and Javad, the Odd Couple who Struck the Iran Deal
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/14 July/15
At first glance, a loyal supporter of Iran's Islamic revolution and a Democratic ex-senator have little in common. Yet against the odds, John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif have blazed their way into history. The tall, lanky American secretary of state, in his expensive tailored suits towers over his shorter, stouter Iranian counterpart, Zarif, in his traditional collarless shirts when they gather for choreographed pictures. But over months of risky, roller-coaster negotiations to strike an unprecedented nuclear non-proliferation agreement, they have both proved to be steely and at times wily rivals. Even Kerry's broken leg has failed to slow him down. They are on first name terms, calling each other John and Javad. And while occasionally they share a joke, the relationship remains business-like, though tinged with obvious respect. That's perhaps no surprise, given their countries have not had diplomatic ties for more than three decades, and remain at odds over a slew of weighty issues, including Tehran's alleged support for Middle East terror groups.
But it seems John and Javad were the right men for the right season, brought together as the world sought to end rising concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Speaking after Tuesday's announcement of the deal, Kerry described his Iranian counterpart as "a tough capable negotiator, patriot, a man who fought every inch of the way for things he believes". "We were both able to approach these negotiations with mutual respect, even when there were times of heated discussion. And -- he would agree with me -- at the end of every meeting we laughed and we smiled and we had the conviction that we would come back and continue to process," Kerry said.Already there has been talk of a possible Nobel peace prize nomination. Tuesday's accord to curb Iran's nuclear program will only increase such speculation.
Zarif, 55, was appointed foreign minister by President Hassan Rouhani in September 2013, and was quickly tasked with resuming the nuclear talks with a clear mandate to end the crippling sanctions against his country. A fluent English speaker with a PhD in international law from the University of Denver, he is a veteran loyalist of the Islamic revolution that toppled the shah in 1979. At the start of the talks it was Zarif who had the distinctive advantage, having already spent 20 years as a diplomat at the United Nations, where he was also Iran's ambassador from 2002-2007. American officials on the other hand had had little contact with Iranian counterparts since ties were snapped, although as a senator Kerry, 71, was part of secret US talks in Oman in 2012 to explore the possibility of reopening talks.
Describing Zarif as "brilliant", Iran expert Suzanne Maloney said "he has the ability to sell policies that are fundamentally problematic from the American point of view, in a way that comes off as completely persuasive and appealing.""It's a misunderstanding to believe that he is somehow more American than he is Iranian," the Brookings Institution expert cautioned.
"He's very much a creature of the Islamic republic, and it's not accidental that he's managed to gain a very high-level position at a crucial time."But Zarif's long stint in the U.S. earned him the hostility of the ultraconservative camps and he was sacked by incoming hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
After six years in academia, Rouhani brought him back to the political fore, offering the promise of rehabilitation.
Deeply religious, he was known to interrupt the negotiations to complete his daily prayers. After which he returned, saying "I fear only one true power."
Despite his faith, Zarif has come under fire from hardliners who suspect him of making too many concessions to the West.
Yet, after marathon all-night sessions in Lausanne in April reached a framework accord, Zarif received a hero's welcome in Tehran.
For Kerry, a practicing Catholic, sealing the deal to curb Iran's nuclear program after almost two years of talks is also a legacy-making victory, halfway through his tenure as America's top diplomat.
It has even greater resonance for the former Massachusetts senator and failed 2004 U.S. presidential candidate after his quixotic bid to strike a long-elusive Middle East peace deal spectacularly collapsed last year.
Zarif and Kerry first met at the start of the talks at the United Nations in September 2013, when the Iranian diplomat surprised everyone with the huge smile which never seemed to leave his face.In the months since, he has gained a reputation for being charming and articulate.Yet, officials say in the negotiating room he has at times grown emotional and even angry, when pushed too hard on something he felt he could not deliver.
Zarif is also one of only a few Iranian officials to have a Twitter account, which remains banned in Iran. He has used that and YouTube effectively to push his message to the U.S.
His profile includes a compelling quote from the 13th century Persian poet, Saadi, which reads in part: "All human beings are members of one frame; Since all, at first, from the same essence came."Agence France Presse

Swedish Jihadi: "Go There with a Bomb"/One month of Islam in Sweden: June 2015
Ingrid Carlqvist/Gatestone Institute.
July 14, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6144/swedish-jihadi
Translation of the original text: Svensk jihadist: "Gå dit med en bomb i stället"
"Muslims in Sweden will become more and more degraded ... so instead of putting on a T-shirt and going to the most hated place for Allah just to stand there and do dawah [missionize], you should go there with a bomb instead. ... Now is the time to show who the earth belongs to!!! ... Save yourself from narr [hellfire] by killing a kafir." — Mikael Skråmo, Swedish convert to Islam.
If the 18-year-old had been a Swedish citizen, the Security Service would not have been able to stop him from going to Syria: it is not yet illegal in Sweden to travel to join ISIS or any other terror group. They would have had to be content with seeing him off, and perhaps politely asking for an interview if and when he came back.
"Why are these attacks happening during Ramadan? It's because the jihadis don't view the violence as something unholy. If the violence is happening for God's sake and according to the rules Islam is perceived to decree, it is in fact a holy action. To the jihadis, this type of holy violence is more meritorious in God's eyes than fasting, prayer and charity. ... In the hadith, jihad in the month of Ramadan is portrayed as giving extra glory." — Mohamed Omar, poet and social commentator.
"The situation in the suburbs is a disaster for Sweden." — Mona Sahlin, national coordinator of the struggle against violent extremists.
In early June, a public debate began on the oppression of women in the Muslim-dominated suburbs of Sweden.
Zeliha Dagli, who labels herself a secular feminist, wrote in an article in the newspaper Aftonbladet that she fled Turkey 30 years ago, but now wants to seek asylum "again" -- in Sweden. Dagli lives in Husby, the Stockholm suburb that made headlines around the world in the summer of 2013, when it was plagued by massive immigrant riots.
Dagli says these suburbs are no longer a part of Sweden, but, rather, redolent of the Middle East. She writes that her everyday life is being more and more influenced by suburban fundamentalists:
"I want a safe haven and I want to be able to drink a glass of beer with my friends Lars, Hassan, Maria, Osman, Ayse and others. I want to go to the Senior Citizens Association and listen to jazz and dance the twist. I want to grow vegetables in the garden and wear short pants, and go to the bathhouse in a bikini. In my neighborhood, I want to escape the judgmental looks of men staring at me. I want to bring home whomever I like, but I can't do these things today because my rights are limited and controlled in my neighborhood. These bearded 'shadows' frighten me."
In a televised debate, Mona Sahlin, Sweden's "national coordinator of the struggle against violent extremists," was forced to admit that the situation in the suburbs is a "disaster for Sweden." Ironically, Sahlin herself has been instrumental in laying the groundwork for contempt against Swedish culture, by saying in reply to a question about what Swedish culture is:
"I've been asked that a lot, but I can't put my finger on what Swedish culture might be. I think that might be the reason many Swedes envy the immigrants. You have a culture, an identity, a history, something that binds you together. And what do we have? We have Midsummer's Eve and 'corny' things like that."[1]
On June 8, a Norwegian teenager was apprehended at Gothenburg's Landvetter Airport by the Swedish Security Service. The young man was on his way to join ISIS; the arrest was made thanks to Norwegian authorities, who had put out a warrant for him. The remarkable thing is that if the 18-year-old had been a Swedish citizen, nobody would have been able to stop him from going: it is not yet illegal in Sweden to travel to join ISIS or any other terror group. The Security Service would have had to be content with seeing him off, and perhaps politely asking for an interview if and when he came back.
On June 10, the alternative online newspaper Fria Tider noted that an 18-year-old Somali man had been taken into custody, suspected of robbing a pawnshop in Västerås. Last summer, the same man had been arrested on suspicion of taking part in the brutal rape of a woman who had a gun shoved up her vagina. He was not, however, convicted of this rape. Ironically, in April of last year, he was honored by the police as a role model for his commitment to the "Tro, hopp och kärlek" [Faith, hope and love] Association in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. The police posted photos on their website, showing him meeting the then Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask -- even though he had already been convicted of unlawful threats, drug-related offenses and driving without a license. After Fria Tider's article, police removed the photos from their website.
On June 12, blogger Torbjörn Jerlerup revealed that a Swedish-Norwegian convert to Islam, Mikael Skråmo, is urging Muslims to commit terrorist acts in Sweden. Skråmo wrote on his Facebook page:
"Muslims in Sweden will become more and more degraded ... so instead of putting on a T-shirt and going to the most hated place for Allah, just to stand there and do dawah [missionize] you should go there with a bomb instead. ... Download Inspire Magazine, start making bombs from simple stuff you can buy at whatever Ica and Coop [stores], you choose. Now is the time to show who the earth belongs to!!!"
According to the journalist Per Gudmundson, this is the first time a Swedish ISIS-jihadi has promoted terror on Swedish soil. Skråmo also urged his brethren to kill the artist Lars Vilks and stressed that Islam sanctions the killing of infidels. "He who kills a kafir [infidel] will never go to the same place as he in hell. Save yourself from narr [hellfire] by killing a kafir."
Skråmo, born in Sweden to Norwegian parents, used to be known as a preacher in radical Muslim circles. Gudmundson writes: "He used to give lectures, for example, for United Muslims of Sweden [Sveriges Förenade Muslimer], and they recently received a 300,000 kronor [about $33,000 USD] subsidy from the Authority for Youth -- and civil society issues, to fight "intolerance." United Muslims of Sweden is a part of the dawah-movement -- and a radical awakening among Swedish Muslims.
Mikael Skråmo, a Swedish convert and ISIS jihadist, brought his family to Syria. Now he is urging Muslims in Sweden to bomb their workplaces.
Also on June 12, journalist Per Gudmundson wrote that the well-known hate preacher Kamal El-Mekki is going to visit Rinkeby Folkets Hus [a community center in a Stockholm suburb] and the Stockholm mosque. "El-Mekki," he wrote, "is an advocate of Saudi criminal laws -- such as mutilation and beheading -- in the West. He is an advocate of capital punishment for those who leave Islam. He also promotes slavery in our time, and thinks that the celebration of Christmas and other non-Muslim holidays is 'evil'."
Three days later, Rinkeby Folkets Hus announced that they had cancelled the meeting with El-Mekki: "In accordance with our policy, we have decided that the preacher Kamal El-Mekki, who was scheduled to attend a meeting at Folkets Hus, is no longer welcome, due to expressing undemocratic views. He has also expressed contempt against women and homosexuals. To lend our facilities to Kamal El-Mekki would be a breach against our policy regarding all men being equal."
On June 15, Mona Walter was also stopped from speaking at Rinkeby Folkets Hus. Walter, a native of Somalia and a convert to Christianity, was scheduled to speak on democracy and freedom of religion. She lives under constant threat for having left Islam, and for travelling around Sweden talking about Islam. Unlike the Islamist Kamal El-Mekki, who was cancelled after Mona Walter, she has never spread hate or undemocratic views. Exactly why she wasn't allowed to speak at Rinkeby Folkets Hus is unclear. Walter herself said that she was sure it was due to Muslims in the area signing petitions against her. In an interview with Christian paper Dagen, she said:
"I've wanted to come to Rinkeby for a long time, to talk to my fellow Somalis, about freedom of religion, about the fact that there are Christian Somalis and that their numbers are increasing, and about Jesus working miracles. Many of the Somali converts from Islam are threatened, and in some cases beaten, so they keep their conversions on Christianity to themselves. But I want to tell them that we have freedom of religion and freedom of speech in Sweden, and it's important to tell it like it is – that not all Somalis are Muslims."
Mona Walter has not given up on Rinkeby. She is determined, she says, to go there one day, "with Bible in one hand and the Quran in the other, and say that you Somalis have freedom of choice to believe anything you like. I have chosen Jesus, and so can you."
On June 17, Sweden's government presented its fast-tracked investigation into how terrorist travel can be made illegal. The members suggested that travelling to commit, or conspiring to commit, terrorist acts should be punishable by up to two years in prison. Financing terrorist activities should also be made illegal. "There is no excuse for these people [ISIS fighters]," said Morgan Johansson, the Minister of Justice, at the press conference. "They can't say afterwards that they didn't know what it was all about. They go with their eyes open."
The changes in the law are now up for review and may come into force around April 1, 2016. Ironically, no suggestion has yet been put forth to criminalize the act of fighting for a terror organization. The government has started a separate inquiry, expected to conclude in June of next year, into this matter.
On June 21, the Israeli human rights organization Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center demanded that the Swedish bank, SE-Banken, stop offering its services to the Free Gaza Movement and "Ship to Gaza," both of which provide ships to try to break the legal Israeli naval blockade, established to prevent weapons, intended to kill Israelis, from being smuggled into the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip. For the last few years, Shurat HaDin has been successful, on behalf of the victims' families, in suing terrorists who have murdered many people. Shurat HaDin found that SE-Banken had a mortgage on the fishing trawler Marianne av Göteborg, named after Marianne Skoog, who passed away in May 2014 and was said to have been a veteran within the Swedish "solidarity movement with Palestine." Shurat HaDin wrote:
"You are placed on formal notice that Mr. Charles Bertel Andreasson, to whom SEB provided a mortgage to finance the purchase of the Marianne Av Goteborg intends to attempt to breach the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) coastal blockade of the Gaza Strip and enter into a violent confrontation with the Israeli armed forces. He has publicly announced he is seeking to smuggle contraband to the terrorist Hamas controlled enclave in violation of international law."
But the letter to SEB CEO Annika Falkengren does not seem to have had any effect. The trawler cast off and headed for the Gaza Strip; it was boarded by the Israeli navy, and all aboard were deported to Sweden. According to the passengers on Marianne, the trawler was in international waters when it was boarded. Sweden therefore filed an official protest against Israel. When the Gaza-bound travellers came back to Sweden on July 6, the Swedish media greeted them as heroes. But sailor Charlie Andreasson has now lost all his licenses and certificates.
On June 22, several alternative media sites commemorated five years since Jennifer Lindström's suicide. On June 6, 2008, 15-year-old Jennifer was subjected to a brutal gang rape, during which several immigrant boys dragged her off to a wooded area. The police found DNA evidence, but the suspects did not have prior criminal records, so police decided not to arrest them. When the inquiry was dropped after a year, Jennifer tried to commit suicide by slashing her wrists. She was saved that time, but two years after the gang rape, she killed herself by jumping in front of a train. A year later, a suspect was apprehended after he had attacked and beaten two girls. His DNA revealed that he had also been one of Jennifer's rapists. Another youth was also later arrested. The sentences were lenient: Abdirahaman Abdullahi Yusuf, a Somali, was sentenced to five months in juvenile detention, and Granit Nito Rashica served six months in prison.
On June 26, Swedish Public Radio [Sveriges Radio] interviewed Magnus Sandelin, a journalist and author of the book Jihad-svenskarna i de islamistiska terrornätverken ["Jihadi Swedes in the Islamist Terrorist Networks"]. The book details the power struggle going on in Eskilstuna for the city's mosques. Muslim groups have tried to take over the city's biggest mosque, run by convert Leif Karlsson, also known as Abd al Haqq Kielan. Karlsson is considered by many to be not radical enough in his struggle to Islamize Sweden, thus, more fervent believers have tried to outmaneuver him through bribes and negative campaigns.
Sandelin says it has been hard discussing these problems in Sweden. One reason is that all criticism of immigrants' culture and religion is thought to favor the Sweden Democrats Party (Sverigedemokraterna). Critics also runs the risk of being labeled racists, and having their lives threatened. Sandelin has had several death threats, just for pointing out some of the problems.
On June 27, the day after the world was shocked by three bloody global Islamist terror acts that took at least 200 lives, the church bells rang in the grand 12th century church of St. Petri in Malmö. They were not ringing to commemorate the victims of Islamist terror, but rather to support Islam. Officially, the bells tolled "in solidarity for the city's diversity," and in protest against the Pegida movement, which had held a meeting nearby criticizing Islam.
In a press release from the church, Vicar Anders Ekhem said he invited Rabbi Rebecca Lillian and Imam Salahuddin Barakat from the Islamic Academy. The goal of the gathering was said to be "to unite for an open and democratic society against antisemitism and Islamophobia".
Immediately after the Pegida meeting, artist Dan Park was reported to the police for breaching hate speech laws. He had held up a banner equating Islam with fascism. Park has been convicted of the same crime before, in connection with an exhibition at a Malmö art gallery.
Also on June 27, the daily tabloid Aftonbladet revealed that their reporters had connected with ISIS recruiters on Facebook. A woman calling herself Umm G is recruiting girls to join the ISIS jihadists in Syria. One of the girls lured into going is 15-year-old "Anna." Three weeks before Aftonbladet met her, she said goodbye to her mother, supposedly to go to school, but instead took a train to Copenhagen Airport in Denmark, where she boarded a plane bound for Istanbul. No one in her family had any idea where she was going, they told the paper, even though "Anna" had started using full-cover clothing and had even shown ISIS videos to the family. Nobody in the family could imagine she would really go, not even when social services showed up in response to an anonymous tip that "Anna" might try to run away to Syria.
She had formed a connection with an 18-year-old man, who told her about life in Syria, describing it as a paradise of money and wealth, where women are free because of how they dress -- full niqab face-covering, long black robes and black gloves.
"He said it's good down there, it's not war everywhere. It's freedom to cover your face," Anna told Aftonbladet.
A friend notified the police, so the 15-year-old girl could be stopped by Turkish police at Istanbul Airport. She was put on a plane back to Copenhagen, where her family came and got her. The International Prosecutor's Office in Malmö has opened an investigation concerning human trafficking.
On June 28, poet and social commentator Mohamed Omar warned about the danger of the Salafists, now beheading people in Europe. Mohamed Omar, who has a Swedish mother and an Iranian father, has a colorful past. As a 16-year-old, he converted to Islam, then debuted as a poet. He won cultural awards and became editor of Minaret magazine. In 2009, he suddenly declared himself an Islamist, praised Iran and explained on Swedish Public Television that "the great threat against society are the Zionists."
Last year, Omar once again changed his stance and wrote a couple of books on why he since left Islamism. Omar is still a Muslim, but now he warns about the Salafists in particular, whom he feels have gained too much influence in Sweden. In an article on the debate website Det goda samhället ["The good society"], Omar wrote:
"But why are these attacks happening during Ramadan? A month of fasting, prayer and stillness? It's because the jihadis don't view the violence as something unholy. If the violence is happening for God's sake and according to the rules Islam is perceived to decree, it is in fact a holy action. To the jihadis, this type of holy violence is more meritorious in God's eyes than fasting, prayer and charity. They rely on the hadith, statements supposedly uttered by the prophet Muhammad himself, that praise jihad and make it a religious duty. In the hadith, jihad in the month of Ramadan is portrayed as giving extra glory."
On June 29, the foundation Tryggare Sverige ["Safer Sweden"] reported that only one in five rape cases in Sweden are "resolved" by the police and judiciary, meaning that most rapists are either not arrested, not prosecuted, or not convicted. During the last five years, some 31,600 rapes or attempted rapes have been reported to the police. Of these, 6,235, or about 20% percent, have been "resolved." Peter Strandell, of Tryggare Sverige, says that no one knows what to do about this problem -- disastrous in a country with the second-highest number of reported rapes in the world.
"There are no surveys indicating what should be done," Strandell says. "Instead, we're in a deadlocked discussion about education and resources. That may be right. But as long as we don't know the requisites, we don't know what we need to do."
Tryggare Sverige now demands vigorous efforts to increase the clearance rate, and suggests that the government should set up an expert team to review how the police and the prosecutors work.
[1] Interview, Euroturk magazine, 2002

Iran's Quds Day: Death to America, Death to Israel
by Lawrence A. Franklin/Gatestone Institute.
July 14, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6160/iran-quds-day-death-america-israel
The ritualistic rally-cries of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" -- and the burning in effigy of the leaders of Israel, America, and Saudi Arabia -- underscore the basic lie that underpins Quds Day: the Iranian regime is focused on Iran's revolutionary extremist agenda, not on the welfare of Palestinian Arabs.
Quds Day has become a day in which Iran and protestors in other societies attack the legitimacy of the state of Israel ("The Little Satan") and continue to threaten the United States ("The Big Satan").
"Another advantage of Al Quds Day 2015 was that it coincided with the final hours of Iran's nuclear talks because these talks are in fact the confrontation between the Islamic Revolution of Iran and world arrogant powers." — Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, Secretary General of the World Forum of Islamic Schools of Thought.
Tehran staged its traditional Quds Day[1] rallies on July 10 in 770 cities across Iran. Quds Day was established by the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the late Imam Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, ostensibly to unify the Muslim world to "liberate" the Palestinian people from the "Zionist Entity's" disputed "occupation."
However, in reality, Quds Day has become a day in which Iran and protestors in other societies attack the legitimacy of the state of Israel ("The Little Satan") and threaten the United States ("The Big Satan").
In the lead-up to Quds Day, the former President of Iran, Al Akbar Rafsanjani, mused in an interview about the eventual disappearance of Israel from history. [2]
The chants at this year's rallies were familiar: "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."
Reportedly, President Hassan Rouhani attended a rally in Tehran and was treated to posters of Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama, and King Salman of Saudi Arabia being burned. He did not protest.
Participants in Tehran's Quds Day rally burn U.S. and Israeli flags, on July 10, 2015. (Image source: ISNA)
Also in attendance in the Tehran rally were Sadeq Larijani, Chief of the Judiciary; Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former President and former Chairman of Iran's Parliament; Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; and Masood Khamenei, son of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
General Safavi, now the chief military advisor to Supreme Leader Khamenei, hinted at Iran's continued military support for anti-Israeli violence: "Muslims' unity and continuation of armed jihad and the Islamic resistance of the Palestinian nation constitute the only strategy for saving and liberating the Holy Quds."
Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, Secretary-General of the World Forum of Islamic Schools of Thought, drew a direct connection between the Quds Day events and the nuclear talks in Vienna. Araki was quoted as saying, "Another advantage of Al Quds Day 2015 was that it coincided with the final hours of Iran's nuclear talks because these talks are in fact the confrontation between the Islamic Revolution of Iran and world arrogant powers."
The themes of this year's rallies were also are familiar, such as labeling Israel as a "Zionist Usurper Regime" and an "imperialist tool of the West designed to destroy Arab solidarity."
Hardliners in the Islamic Republic who oppose any agreement with the P5+1 powers over Iran's nuclear programs, used Quds Day as an opportunity publicly to demonstrate their continued influence in the regime, as well as their ideological loyalty to the country's 1979 revolution.
The ritualistic rally-cries of death to America and Israel, and the burning in effigy of the leaders of Israel, America, and Saudi Arabia underscore the basic lie that underpins Quds Day: the Iranian regime is focused on Iran's revolutionary extremist agenda, not on the welfare of Palestinian Arabs.
Ironically, it is largely the Islamic Republic's support of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas that has kept Israel feeling justifiably threatened, and that has contributed to the inability of Israelis and Palestinians to reach an equitable peace agreement -- apart from the sobering fear of all Palestinian leaders of being killed as a traitor, like Egypt's President, Anwar Sadat.
If Iran is allowed to complete its nuclear weapons program, it is just a matter of time before the U.S. and Europe will feel threatened, too.
Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, where he was a Military Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Israel.
[1] "Quds" is Arabic for "the holy", a reference to Jerusalem ("al-Quds").
[2] Interview with Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, Al-Ahd news website, 6 July 2015.

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