Free Republic

New evidence suggests Iran received help from Venezuela with its nuclear program despite a decade of U.N.-mandated sanctions aimed at curbing the rouge regime’s controversial nuclear and ballistic missile programs. A 2009 document obtained by Brazil’s leading weekly, Veja magazine, shows late dictator President Hugo Chavez signing off on the release of funds to help Iran with its nuclear ambitions. Specifically, the document states the funds were to be designated for the import of equipment for a gunpowder factory and the development of production plants for nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, elements used in rocket propulsion for Iran’s government. There is also...

A hoped-for export bonanza has failed to materialize a year after a deal to lift international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, a German industry association told AFP Monday. “Despite increased foreign trade, there is a certain disillusionment,” Volker Treier, chief economist at the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK), said. German exports to Iran had increased 11 percent in the first four months of 2016 to €890 million, and likely stood at over €1 billion in the first six months, Treier said. That leaves a lot of ground to make up if firms are to match DIHK...

Iran, the nation that has built a well-deserved reputation as the world’s premier state-sponsor of terrorism has a new lobbyist and he is none other than U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Since the Obama administration inked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in January, Kerry has been busying himself with ensuring that European banks start doing business with the Iranians. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only has the United States and its European allies agreed to lift sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the administration is now encouraging the private banking sector to do the same. It appears however,...

The Obama administration will not commit to halting its effort to help Iran access the U.S. dollar, despite past commitments to do so, according to a new congressional inquiry obtained by the Washington Free Beacon into the Treasury Department’s refusal to uphold its promises. Leading senators are threatening to block all consideration of Treasury Department nominees until the administration ends its bid “to enable Iranian access to U.S. dollars” throughout the international financial system, according to a letter sent Thursday to the Treasury Department by Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Mark Kirk (R., Ill.). Potential Iranian access to the...

House Republicans are doubling down against the White House in a campaign to prevent Iran from doing business in U.S. dollars, the latest political spat between them and the Obama administration over implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) introduced a measure this week to make denying Iran access to dollars a hard-and-fast law, while GOP leaders have issued near-daily condemnations of the administration for not promising more forcefully that Iran won’t find a backdoor to the U.S.-based financial system. “If President Obama won’t rule out new concessions to the Iranian regime, Congress...

Iran’s foreign minister said that Tehran would respond to American moves to curtail its missile program by bolstering it, semi-official news agency Mehr reported on Tuesday. Mohammad Javad Zarif said that instead of limiting them, “Iran’s missile capabilities will be further enforced,” in accordance with President Hassan Rouhani’s orders. Zarif also discounted promises by US presidential candidates to nullify the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, saying they were “following the orders of Zionists, but these are just words and should not be heeded.”

On Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Yukiya Amano explained what had up to this point been a mystery: namely, why its recent reports on Iran’s nuclear program have been so vague and contain such little data. As it turns out, under the Iran nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there are now limitations on what the IAEA is allowed to report. According to Amano, due to new U.N. Security Council and IAEA resolutions, the agency will only monitor and verify Iran’s compliance with its JCPOA commitments and will no longer provide broad reporting on...

The first train to connect China and Iran arrived in Tehran on Monday loaded with Chinese goods, reviving the ancient Silk Road, the Iranian railway company said. The train, carrying 32 containers of commercial products from eastern Zhejiang province, took 14 days to make the 9,500-kilometer (5,900-mile) journey through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. [...] According to Iranian media, more than a third of Iran's foreign trade is with China, which is Tehran's top customer for oil exports. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani agreed last month to build economic ties worth up to $600 billion within the next...

resident Obama called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the so-called nuclear deal with Iran a "victory" for U.S. and international security.  Indeed, the actual text says that "full implementation…will positively contribute to regional and international peace."  Iran has since deployed its military assets to Syria, built up forces along Israel's border, twice test-fired a ballistic missile, and even unilaterally amended the agreement to loosen its own compliance requirements. The United States can expect more of this provocative behavior because a hesitant, Iran-friendly executive branch has shown little interest in exercising its self-declared authority to reinstitute sanctions.  Walk light...

Less than one week before the international community is set to unlock a decade of sanctions imposed on Iran, the country’s Islamic hardliners deliberately generated a crisis with the US for pure domestic consumption with the aim of ensuring the ayatollahs’s continued grip on power. Once the International Atomic Energy Agency announces on Friday as expected that Iran has fulfilled its obligations under the US-brokered nuclear accord, the billions of dollars in unfrozen accounts and the massive flow of oil exports will usher in historic changes to Iran’s long-isolated economy.

<p>Iran removed the core of its plutonium reactor and filled it with concrete Monday, paving the way for economic and financial sanctions to be lifted soon.</p> <p>The work that effectively rendered the reactor at Arak harmless was the last major hurdle for Iran to fulfill its commitments under a landmark deal reached just shy of six months ago in Vienna. The International Atomic Energy Agency must verify that everything was done satisfactorily before U.S. and international sanctions can be lifted. But that is expected to take days, not weeks.</p>

International sanctions on Iran will be lifted on Saturday when the United Nations nuclear agency declares Tehran has complied with an agreement to scale back its nuclear program, Iran‘s foreign minister said. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif arrived in Vienna, headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body expected to issue a report triggering the lifting of sanctions imposed by the United Nations, United States and European Union. The sanctions have cut off a nation of nearly 80 million from the global financial system, drastically reduced the exports of a major oil producer and imposed severe economic hardship on...

Analysis: Friday will see the removal of the sanctions regime imposed on Iran since 2007, and Russia is already deep in talks with Tehran on the sale of advanced weapons. Most of the economic sanctions imposed on Iran will be removed on Friday, US State Department officials said, while Russia readies the sale of advanced weapons to the Islamic Republic. January 15 will mark the end of the international sanctions regime, which has been in place since 2007 through a series of decisions by American Presidents George W. Bush and Barak Obama, legislation passed by the US Congress and in...

The White House said it pulled back on levying sanctions against Iran for ballistic missile violations because they're just trying to determine when they'd have "maximum impact."A couple dozen Senate Democrats have been heaping pressure on the Obama administration to do something in response to the October and November launches, which run afoul of UN Security Council Resolution 1929.Last week, Iran President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense department to step up the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile program in response to a report that the Treasury Department was preparing sanctions in response to two illegal missile tests.The Wall Street Journal reported...

U.S. Firms Prepare For End To Iran Sanctions Apple, GE, HP gear up for potential opening of markets in Islamic Republic By BENOÎT FAUCON Dec. 23, 2015 Ahead of an expected lifting of sanctions, several U.S. corporate giants including personal-computer seller HP Inc. and General Electric Inc.’s oil-services unit are actively exploring a market entry into Iran. U.S. companies other than food, aircraft-parts and medicine suppliers are still banned from conducting direct transactions with Iran. But last week Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing that sanctions relief on Tehran...

Iran's energy industry is plagued by a host of challenges--from leaking pipelines to skeptical western oil investors--as it attempts to throttle up crude output next year when western sanctions are expected to be lifted. Iran's aging infrastructure is in disrepair after several years without the expertise of the world's largest oil companies, western and Iranian officials say. The country is likely to be selling as much as 500,000 new barrels of oil into an already saturated market for crude exports, setting up logistical hurdles. And the Islamic Republic is more divided politically over the return of western companies than expected,...

Ahead of the planned lifting of Western sanctions against Iran, businessmen from around the world are visiting the country, and as one group from Germany discovered, there is no shortage of opportunities. [...] To help people establish relationships with representatives of the "Evil Empire," the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce set up a "B2B" contact exchange. It's a form of speed dating, in which Iranian businesspeople walk from one table to the next, together with an interpreter and a handful of brochures of the Lower Saxony companies. The business owners from Hanover are quickly surrounded by Iranians, who treat them like...

Tehran (AFP) - Iran is banning the entry of US consumer goods, the commerce and industry minister said Thursday, as the country prepares for a lifting of economic sanctions. "In order to boost national production, it is necessary... to stop entry of American consumer goods and to prohibit products that symbolise the presence of the United States in the country," Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh wrote on his ministry's

Senior Iranian Negotiators Salehi, Kamalvandi: On October 19 President Obama Will Announce Lifting Of American Sanctions According to senior Iranian negotiators, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and an architect of the nuclear agreement (JCPOA), and Beherouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on October 19, 2015 President Obama will announce that sanctions will be lifted and not merely suspended, contrary to the July 14, 2015 text of the agreement to which Iran is obligated.[1] If this report proves accurate, it means that President Obama surrendered to the threats and...

The Obama administration began implementing its landmark nuclear agreement with Iran with an eye toward lifting expansive sanctions imposed on Tehran in the past decade. Concerns from opponents of the deal continued to grow, however, as senior administration officials during the weekend played down the importance of a United Nations probe into whether Tehran has attempted to secretly develop the technologies needed to build atomic weapons.The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is committed under the deal to release a report by year-end about the status of Iran’s alleged weaponization work. U.S. officials over the weekend said the...