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Reuters reported Wednesday
that Iran's crude exports to China in April had more than doubled from
where they were a year ago - the final number constituting an all-time
record high - and that the amount when added to South Korean and Indian
numbers meant that Tehran had busted through export limits set by the
interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) for what would be the sixth month in a
row. The dynamic has been explicitly documented month by month,
but Obama administration officials had expressed themselves
unconcerned. White House and State Department spokespeople had
emphasized their belief that Iran would slip underneath the JPA's export
cap any month now, and that the total over the agreement's six-month
period would average to the allowed 1 million barrels per day (bpd)
level. The new figures come as analysts are expressing increasingly
pointed worries that the administration has allowed the JPA's erosion in
sanctions to slip out of control. Mark Dubowitz, executive director of
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, worried on Thursday
in the National Interest that a robust deal putting Iran's nuclear
program beyond use for weaponization may become unreachable "if American
negotiators continue to insist upon weakening their leverage." Dubowitz
more specifically worried that the JPA's erosion in coercive financial
pressure had triggered a "too rapid... shift from fear to greed in the
international business community, and from despair to hope in the
Iranian market," the result being that the effectiveness of sanctions
had been blunted. The article specifically cited new models
and analysis - co-developed by FDD and Roubini Global Economics -
suggesting that economic optimism in Iran was trading off with leverage
that Western negotiators intend to lean on.
NOW Media reported Thursday
that the Lebanese parliament had failed for the fifth time in a row to
successfully elect a president, after Hezbollah-linked parliamentary
blocs again boycotted the relevant session and prevented a quorum from
forming. The months-long crisis - which has seen
the Iran-backed terror group leverage its political power to
consistently stymie efforts aimed at achieving political stability - has
been blasted by top Lebanese lawmakers, including Lebanese President Michel Suleiman,
for undermining objective Lebanese interests. It has also deepened
criticism of foreign policy analysts who had suggested that Hezbollah
was an indigenous Lebanese organization seeking to preserve Lebanon's
sovereignty, to the point where some observers have approached
borderline ridicule of the idea. Tony Badran, a research fellow at the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), on Thursday unpacked
a range of ongoing dynamics under the headline "Hezbollah's foreign
origins." Badran among other things conveyed recent remarks from Naim
Qassem - Hezbollah's second-in-command - declaring that "the [Israeli]
invasion was not the reason [Hezbollah] was formed," a statement that
Badran read alongside his own long-repeated argument
that Hezbollah's creation was "related to the network of Iranian
revolutionary cadres, especially those loyal to Imam Ruhollah Khomeini,
who were operating in Lebanon in the 1970s." Lebanon's s-called March 14
camp has become increasingly vocal
in declaring that Hezbollah's fighting in Syria is being done at Iran's
behest and to the detriment of Lebanese interests, and even Lebanese
Shiite clerics have called on the group
to extricate itself from Syria. Badran tersely noted that Qassem's
statements, especially understood in light of domestic opposition,
"undermine the conventional narrative about the group’s genesis," which
link Hezbollah's existence to Israeli military actions.
Reuters on Thursday flatly assessed
that "Syria has made no progress in relinquishing a last batch of
chemical weapons [CWs]," noting that the Bashar al-Assad regime is using
claims of nearby fighting to excuse the "increasingly likely" scenario
under which it would fail to meet a final deadline set for it to
dismantle its CWs. Recent months have seen consistent statements and analysis
suggesting that Damascus would fall short of meeting the terms of a
September 2013 agreement - under which Syria ascended to the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC) and committed to handing over parts of its
nonconventional arsenal in exchange for the West standing down from
impending military strikes - even before Damascus began publicly
declaring that the failure was linked to the proximity of rebel forces.
The news comes amid reports that Syria is also violating the terms of
the agreement by ignoring CWC prohibitions against the battlefield
deployment of chlorine-based CWs. Reuters reported on Tuesday
that a rebel-held village had been bombed by Assad-loyal forces, and
that part of the bombardment had included chlorine bombs which killed at
least one teenager. The wire noted that the attack was "the sixth
alleged poison gas attack [in Kfar Zeita] in two months." The Guardian noted Thursday
that efforts to hold the regime accountable via multilateral
institutions were showing little progress. Most specifically, the outlet
reported that Russia and China had vetoed a United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) resolution that would have referred Syria to the
International Criminal Court. Guardian Middle East Editor Ian
Black juxtaposed a statement by Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin -
that the vote was a "publicity stunt" - with the manifest fact that
there "no peace negotiations are currently taking place."
Bloomberg's Tel Aviv-based reporter Jonathan Ferziger this week conveyed assessments
indicating that a recently inked unity deal between the Palestinian
Fatah faction and the rival Hamas organization - which is aimed at
paving the way for a single government agreed to by both sides - may
trigger the financial collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as
blackletter U.S. laws and European Union disenchantment lead to cutbacks
in aid. The report is one in a long line
of similar write-ups, but it was particularly blunt in specifying the
amounts at stake: over $2 billion total, divided between $440 million in
American funds, $584 million in European funds, and $1.2 billion in
Israeli transfers. The outlet also quoted Ahmed Awad, a political
scientist at Al-Quds Open University in Gaza City, noting simply that
"we all know that the PA survives only through foreign donations and
without them, it could collapse." Hopes that financial sanctions might
be avoided if Hamas could be dragged toward the center have been stymied
by repeated statements
from the group's leaders rejecting any possibility that they might
cease pursuing the eradication of the Jewish state. Moreover, several
data points indicate that the terror group may be planning attacks
against Israeli targets. Israel Hayom reported Monday
that a Hamas operative had been intercepted carrying videos documenting
the patterns of Israeli passenger train lines that run close to the
Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
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