China's Imports Of Iranian Oil Push India To Ignore Russia Sanctions

Khamenei’s Shiite followers call him the leader of the Muslim world, but his appeal reaches a tiny minority of Muslims who are overwhelmingly Sunni. He is known among many Sunnis as a man who has been sowing division among Muslims through his actions in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, his critics say that the extent of despotism and financial corruption in the system under his leadership leaves no room for spirituality.

Khamenei also repeated his favorite theory that the West tithers on the verge of defeat and collapse, at a time when the United States and Europe have shown strong unity to confront Russian aggression in Ukraine and NATO has just accepted Sweden and Finland as new members.

He said in his message on the occasion of the annual Hajj pilgrimage: "The Islamic nation can once again observe its unity and harmony in this clear, timeless mirror, and take this opportunity to turn away from factors that lead to disunity and division." The statement is in total contradiction to Khamenei’s and his government's behavior as they have not been able to maintain friendly ties with Muslim nations around Iran, including Saudi Arabia where millions of Muslims from other countries gather for the pilgrimage.

Nonetheless, Khamenei accused "the enemies of Muslim nations" of "weakening the two bolstering elixirs of Islamic unity and spirituality among our nations."

"The enemies of Islam strive to weaken spirituality by promoting a western lifestyle that is devoid of spirituality and which is rooted in a short-sighted, materialistic vision of the world," Khamenei reiterated. "on the other hand," he stressed "everyone must work to overcome the factors that foster division and disunity."

Khamenei in his message emphasized the role of ideas such as "Islamic awakening, resistance," and what he called "the political governance in the Islamic Republic of Iran," as the elements of unity in the Muslim world. This comes while his idea of resistance has so far been nothing more than reckless anti-Americanism and opposition to the coexistence of regional nations with Israel.

He further charged that " the Arrogant Powers, and the United States are worried about such a trend in the Islamic world and employ all their resources in order to confront it. The tactics they employ range from dominating the media and soft warfare, to warmongering and starting proxy wars, political espionage, and acts of inducement, and threatening, bribing and other forms of enticement." He added that "the United States is using Israel as a tool for this all-out effort." Khamenei simply ignored Israel's alliance with most of the region's Muslim nations to prevent the Islamic Republic's atrocities.

Meanwhile, on the same day that Khamenei's message was sent out, his senior adviser for international affairs, Former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati whose Cold War era ideas is believed to have some influence on Khamenei, said "Iran cannot tolerate NATO's presence at its borders," mindless of the fact, that Turkey, a NATO member state for more than 70 years is a neighbor of Iran.

Velayati also echoed Khamenei's belief that the United States and Europe have been in decline during recent years, without providing any proof for the claim.

In a lecture delivered in Australia Tuesday, Grossi said that “challenging” diplomacy aimed at restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear was taking place in an “important” context.

“The lack of progress in verifying the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program may affect other countries’ decisions,” Grossi said at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Canberra. “We are now in a situation where Iran’s neighbors could start to fear the worst and plan accordingly. There are countries in the region today looking very carefully at what is happening with Iran, and tensions in the region are rising. Political leaders have on occasionally openly stated they would actively seek nuclear weapons if Iran were to pose a nuclear threat.”

Grossi did not elaborate. There have been intermittent, but unsubstantiated reports, that Saudi Arabia has an arrangement with Pakistan over an option of importing technology needed for nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia plans to operate two nuclear reactors for civil purposes by 2040. Like Tehran, Riyadh is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT).

Grossi said “a defining moment” was being reached for “global nuclear non-proliferation,” with continuing “tendencies towards proliferation” despite a “strong” international non-proliferation framework with 192 NPT signatories and 175 member states in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA director-general emphasized the importance of additional protocols, agreements reached with non-nuclear states giving greater inspections powers to the agency than required under the more limited NPT ‘safeguards’ arrangements. He argued that additional protocols developed by the 1990s reflected experience of Iraq, where a declared nuclear program in the 1980s hid an undeclared program that was “far from peaceful.”

Grossi also cited a lack of agency access in the nuclear programs of apartheid South Africa, North Korea, Libya, and Syria.

Iran – ‘periods of tension and cooperation’

Turning to Iran, Grossi surveyed 20 years of “countless interactions between the IAEA and Iran aimed at verifying that Iran’s nuclear program is purely peaceful.” He referred to “UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran cease all enrichment… times when Iran provisionally applied an additional protocol and times when it did not…[as well as] periods of cooperation and periods of tension.”

Grossi recalled the days of the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which ended with United States withdrawal in 2018 and Iran in 2019 beginning to exceed JCPOA limits on its nuclear program.

“The IAEA was charged [under the JCPOA] with verifying that Iran respected the new restrictions on its nuclear program,” Grossi said. “Of great importance also was Iran’s acceptance once more of the additional protocol.”

‘Credible Information’

Iran ceased to apply the additional protocol in early 2021, leading to restrictions on IAEA inspectors’ access. A series of ad hoc arrangements reached by Grossi with Tehran did not prevent the IAEA chief from declaring in June that with the prevailing level of access he would within four weeks being unable to certify the peaceful nature of the Iran nuclear program.

In his speech Tuesday, Grossi also highlighted agency dissatisfaction at Iran’s explanation of uranium traces found at sites linked to work before 2003 in the face of “assembled credible information indicating a possible military dimension.” The IAEA board last month passed a resolution censuring Iran over its alleged failure to resolve these “longstanding safeguards issues.”

Grossi defended a return to the JCPOA in the face of last week’s failure by the US and Iran, meeting in Doha ‘proximity’ talks, to agree a path back to compliance. The IAEA chief said that after decades of work to combat proliferation “what remains constant is that the Agency is the ultimate guarantee of any agreement.” Without IAEA participation, he argued, “any agreement is unverifiable.”

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on Wednesday that the international network used a web of Persian Gulf-based front companies to facilitate the delivery and sale of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian goods from Iranian companies to East Asia.

Two UAE-based Iranian nationals, Morteza Rajabieslami and Mahdieh Sanchuli, two vessels (BS BRAVO and SUMMER 5) as well as 13 companies including Iran's Persian Gulf Star Oil Company, Jam Petrochemical Company, and several firms in UAE and Hong Kong have been added to OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals list.

“While the United States is committed to achieving an agreement with Iran that seeks a mutual return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we will continue to use all our authorities to enforce sanctions on the sale of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also announced the new sanctions on the Iranian petroleum and petrochemical producers, transporters, and front companies in a tweet, saying that “Absent a commitment from Iran to return to the JCPOA, an outcome we continue to pursue, we will keep using our authorities to target Iran's exports of energy products.”

Some of the new sanctions were levied pursuant to Executive Order 13846, which would be lifted in case the US returns to the JCPOA, whose prospects are withering. 

Belgium’s Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said Tuesday the man was seized in Iran on February 24 and has been in “illegal” detention since. 

He did not identify the man but he was most likely referring to Olivier Vandecasteele, a 41-year-old Belgian aid worker who has served in various international humanitarian organizations since at least 2006.

The announcement by the ministry came after Iran International revealed the identity of the Belgian national, who had previously worked in India, Afghanistan, and Mali and later became the director of Norwegian Refugee Council’s Iran operations in 2015 and assumed the same position with Relief International in Iran in 2020. On July 2, an informed source had told Iran International that at least two Belgian citizens are currently in prison in Iran.

A draft law proposed by the Belgian government to the parliament could put the seal of approval on an agreement with Iran, which could lead to the release of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat serving a 20-year prison sentence in Belgium for planning a terror attack in Paris four years ago.

Numerous people and groups from around the world have warned about the imminent perilous consequences of the prisoner exchange treaty, calling “the green light to state terrorism” that only emboldens the Islamic Republic.

The man, named only as ‘Alexander J’ due to German privacy laws, allegedly between 2018 and 2020 sold Iran laboratory equipment, including four spectrometers, that required special licenses and was worth nearly 1 million Euros.

The Hamburg report said two alleged accomplices were still sought, and listed the case under ‘proliferation,’ which it defined as “the procurement of products for the production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and the corresponding carrier technology (rocket technology), including the know-how required for this."

Iran's regime is mentioned 82 times in the 194-page Hamburg report that focuses on a wide range of security threats to Hamburg's democracy.

At the time of Alexander J’s arrest in September, German police searched offices and apartments in 11 separate locations, across three German states – Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia.

A report last year from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (Isis) said the case reflected “the continued effort of Iran to break trade control laws and sanctions of other nations to procure items for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.” Isis said Iran had in the Alexander J case not sought permits required under the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal for equipment that “could contribute to sensitive activities, including enrichment-related activities, reprocessing or heavy-water-related activities.”