Quick Hits

Interesting Iranian Op on US Soil

So a few days ago the US DOJ just released an indictment of 4 Iranian individuals who conspired to kidnap or coerce Masih Alinejad an American-Iranian human rights activist to come back to Iran. The DOJ press release can be found here and the Masih’s account of the issue via the UAE news site The National is here. First case to my knowledge of something like this happening on US soil against a US citizen. Can also see another decent US mouthpiece here on a summary of events.

Also random the alleged money launder Niloufar Bahadorifar (aka Nellie Bahadorifar) had a LinkedIn account which seems to have been removed recently. Title states Business Manager at CHANEL but that’s only viewable from archived search engine results. Not able to fact check this any more than that though. https://www.linkedin.com/in/niloufar-bahadori-b4195486

Interpretation - I find this interesting from the US/Iranian nuclear diplomacy angle.

First of why was the indictment released this week? Aside from the legal hurdles and timelines these cases can be kept under wraps until its decided to go public. This looks to be another piece used to put pressure on Iran by the US for more international credibility for employing its crippling sanctions and delaying any JCPOA result.

There has been little progress in any diplomatic discussions after the June elections for the new Iranian president-elect Ebrahim Raisi. Biden’s said there’s not timeline for a seventh round of talks but it seems like the longer this delay the less likely for an easy return to JCPOA. source

Aside. Also international media has deemed Raisi as a hardliner (hardliner=bad in their definition). Most media sites utilize this label with no specific examples for Raisi’s views or opinions of matters except for the fact that he was a judge on the 1988 tribunals (Death Committee) and was Khamenei’s pick for president. These vagaries are problematic in actual understanding a person but go with the territory of political reporting.

Lastly here’s an insightful source when accounting for the position of Yemen and how this is currently viewed by Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and the US.

https://sanaacenter.org/publications/analysis/14679

IAEA Update

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/21/06/gov2021-29.pdf

That’s an update on 4 previously undisclosed locations first recognized by the IAEA in 2018. Iran gave complementary access to 3 where all were found to have multiple uranium particles of anthropogenic origin but has not elaborated on these results.

Also broader summary of the monitoring snafu and “official enrichment numbers” https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/21/06/gov2021-28.pdf

9 June 2021- IAEA estimates of the “bad” uranium are “ 62.8 kg of uranium enriched up to 20% U-235; and 2.4 kg of uranium enriched up to 60% U-235”

Another News Source

I have not been using liveumap for any regional Middle East news but found it to be entertaining to guess who’s running it. Supposedly the site originated with two Ukranian individuals during the Russia-Ukraine crisis over Crimea. In their about section their governed by Liveuamap LLC under the jurisdiction of the State of Virginia, USA with a “EU-based technical infrastructure”. Curious.

https://liveuamap.com/about#history

Just be wary of the types of bias from a source like this while using it. Seems to get a good grasp of quick timely events from Twitter. I’ll be adding this to the source list I use but from what I can estimate it won’t be that noteworthy to my uses.

The LLC has been inactive since December 2020. https://cis.scc.virginia.gov/EntitySearch/BusinessInformation?businessId=899111&source=FromEntityResult&isSeries%20=%20false

Iraq Kurdistan

Also weird things going on in the PUK. Seems to be some political infighting among the Talabani family.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/opinion/16072021

https://1001iraqithoughts.com/2021/07/15/the-battle-for-jalal-talabanis-successorship/