Category Archives: #StopIran

Iran Sanctions and Real Estate Investments in the U.S.

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Primer: While the United States under the Obama administration paid out $1.7 billion to Iran, still held and blocked is an estimated $1.97 billion in bonds that were or are held by Citigroup. There is additionally real estate property held not only as an embassy in Washington DC, but there is a 36 story office building in New York City owned by an Iranian Foundation known as Alavi. Other properties are located in Texas, California, Virginia, Maryland and other locations in New York City. For the most part these have been frozen by the United States and remain so.

There are 2 key Executive Orders #’s 13438 and 13572 that refer to Islamic State and Iranian Shiite militia operating in Iraq and the IRGC Qods Force and Commander Qasem Soleimani that remain in effect.

Trump’s organization did business with Iranian bank later linked to terrorism

GOP nominee has slammed Clinton for cutting ‘deals with our foreign adversaries’

CPI: Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump Organization kept the bank on as a tenant for four more years after the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bank Melli in 1999 as being controlled by the Iranian government.

U.S. officials later alleged that Bank Melli had been used to obtain sensitive materials for Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. authorities also alleged that the bank had been used between 2002 and 2006 to funnel money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has sponsored terrorist attacks — a period that overlapped with the time the bank rented office space from Trump.

The Trump Organization’s dealings with the Iranian bank shed more light on Trump’s wide-ranging business interests, which sometimes stand at odds with his blunt declarations on the campaign trail. Trump has denounced Iran as a “big enemy,” blasted Hillary Clinton for not taking a harder line against the Iranian regime and charged that donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation amounted to evidence of corruption. His five-year stint as Bank Melli’s landlord provides an example of the Trump Organization itself doing business with a government hostile to the United States.

“It’s a pretty hypocritical position to take,” said Richard Nephew, who served from 2013 to 2015 as principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy at the U.S. State Department and spent nearly a decade working on Iran sanctions in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “It suggests that his principles are pretty flexible when it comes to him getting paid.”

A court document obtained by ICIJ indicates that Bank Melli’s rent on more than 8,000 square feet on the GM Building’s 44th floor may have topped half a million dollars a year.

The legal ramifications of the Trump Organization taking rent payments from Bank Melli are unclear.

At the time, the U.S. had a sweeping embargo in place which prohibited Americans from doing business with Iran, including receiving rent payments. However, some Iranian organizations were granted licenses exempting specific transactions from sanctions. If the payments were licensed, it may have been legally difficult for the Trump Organization to evict the bank.

The Treasury Department does not publicly disclose individual licenses granting companies exemptions from sanctions rules. The Treasury Department, the Trump campaign and Bank Melli all declined to answer whether the agency had issued a license to the Trump Organization or the bank permitting rent payments during Trump’s ownership of the building.

The Trump campaign declined to answer any questions about Bank Melli for this story, but said Trump would take steps to avoid any conflicts of interest with his business dealings if he is elected president.

“Mr. Trump’s sole focus is and will be on making our country great again,” campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email. “He has already committed to putting his assets in a blind trust and will have no involvement whatsoever in the Trump Organization.”

Bank Melli did not respond to repeated telephone and email inquiries by ICIJ to its offices in Tehran, London and Paris.

Bank Melli’s office in the GM Building was listed by the Treasury Department among financial institutions “owned or controlled” by the Iranian government and subject to U.S. economic sanctions, according to the Code of Federal Regulations from the years 1999 through 2003. Trump owned the GM Building from July 1998 until September 2003, New York City property records show.

Under U.S. sanctions rules, Bank Melli was forbidden from conducting banking transactions within the U.S., but the bank may have maintained its New York offices in the hope that the U.S. government would someday ease sanctions against Iranian businesses.

The bank moved out of the GM Building sometime after 2003. A spokesperson for Boston Properties, Inc., which is currently the building’s majority owner, said Bank Melli was not a tenant when Boston Properties and other partners bought the building in 2008.

Bank’s ties to terror

U.S. sanctions against Iran date back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists seized power and held more than 50 Americans hostage for more than a year. After briefly lifting restrictions when the hostages were released, President Ronald Reagan designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and imposed new sanctions in 1984 and 1987.

At the time, Donald Trump called for the U.S. take a tougher line against the Iranian regime.

In 1987, he suggested in a speech in New Hampshire that the U.S. should attack Iran and seize some of its oil fields to hit back for what he described as Iran’s bullying of America.

“I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools,” Trump told The Guardian in 1988. “It’d be good for the world to take them on.”

In the years that followed, Iran stepped up its support for international terrorist attacks, according to authorities in the U.S. and other Western nations.

In 1994, a suicide bomber killed 85 people at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, an attack that Argentine prosecutors later charged was coordinated by the Iranian government.

In 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 American servicemen at the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia. A U.S. court later held that the bombing had been “planned, funded, and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

As Iran supported terror attacks abroad, the U.S. moved to punish the regime economically. President Bill Clinton approved a sweeping embargo in 1995 that banned Americans from conducting trade with Iranian businesses.

Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-owned banks, had long had an office in the GM Building in midtown Manhattan. In 1998, Trump’s real estate organization bought the building and inherited Bank Melli as a tenant.

It is not clear if Trump knew personally that Bank Melli was renting an office from his company, but he was the Trump Organization’s  chairman and president, and has described himself as a hands-on manager who pays attention to details.

Nephew, who worked on sanctions and nuclear nonproliferation issues for the U.S. government from 2003 to 2015, said there was less awareness in the 1990s about Iran’s nuclear program and the role of banks in financing terrorism. But he said that accepting payments from Bank Melli should have raised a red flag, even in 1998.

“Should someone in America have known better than to do business with Iran? Yeah,” Nephew said.

George Ross, the longtime executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, said he was not aware that Bank Melli had been a Trump tenant.

“We had any number of tenants in the GM Building,” Ross said in a brief telephone interview. “They might have been in there, but I have no knowledge of them.”

Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Iran at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that it was “remarkable” that the Trump Organization had kept Bank Melli as a tenant for four years after the Treasury Department had listed the bank as an Iran-controlled entity.

“I just don’t think that a company of that size and means should be able to hide behind a ‘we didn’t know’ kind of argument,” Ottolenghi said.

In 2007, U.S. authorities charged that Bank Melli had facilitated purchases for Iran’s nuclear program, and that it had been used to send at least $100 million to the Quds Force, the feared special operations unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The Quds Force was designated as a supporter of terrorism by President George W. Bush weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for providing support to the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah, groups that the U.S. has labeled as terrorist organizations.

Bank Melli played an important role in Iran’s nuclear program and support for international terrorism in the years before it was singled out by Treasury in 2007, experts told ICIJ.

“It was allowing the entities that were shopping for the regime to make payments,” said Ottolenghi, who described Bank Melli as “critical” to Iran’s past nuclear and terrorist activities.

A representative for Glodow Nead Communications, a public relations firm representing the Trump Organization, told an ICIJ reporter that the Trump Organization would only comment if the story was positive. She declined as a matter of policy to provide contact information for any of its employees.

The Trump Organization continued renting office space to Bank Melli until the insurance company Conseco, which had provided financing for the 1998 purchase, took control of the GM Building in 2003 and sold it to the Macklowe Organization, a New York City real estate developer.

Trump talks Iran

As a presidential candidate, Trump has been a fierce critic of Iran, denouncing its government as “the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism.” He has vowed to take a more warlike posture against the regime, threatening on Sept. 9 to shoot Iranian ships out the water if their sailors made rude gestures toward U.S. Navy ships.

Last week, during the first of three face-to-face debates with Clinton, Trump panned the United States’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, calling it  “one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history.”

In June, a statement by the Trump campaign blasted Clinton for her work in support of the Iran nuclear deal after the airline Iran Air struck an agreement to purchase aircraft from Boeing, a company that has contributed to the Clinton Foundation.

“This is another example of Clinton’s pay-to-play governing style,” the Trump campaign said. “She will cut deals with our foreign adversaries as long as they are willing to line her pockets.”

At the same time, news reports published in the course of the presidential campaign have shown that the Trump Organization has been entangled with a number of foreign governments that are hostile to the United States.

Trump tried to raise money for the Trump Organization from the regime of Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator who provided support for the 1988 Pan Am flight bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 189 Americans, Buzzfeed News reported in June.

A company owned by Trump violated the embargo against Cuba with a business trip to the island in 1998, shortly before he gave a speech in Miami expressing his support for the embargo, Newsweek reported in September. In addition, Bloomberg News has reported that Trump Organization executives may have also violated the Cuban embargo by scouting out a possible investment in a golf course near Havana in late 2012 or early 2013. The deal ultimately fell through, according to the report.

The Trump Organization has also made millions selling apartments to the government of Saudi Arabia, the New York Daily News reported in September. The Saudi government is formally a U.S. ally but is suspected of supporting militant Islamic groups, and Trump has called on the Clinton Foundation to return Saudi donations because of the government’s poor human rights record.

Other Trump Organization entanglements in India, Russia and Dubai create conflicts of interest that could threaten American national security if Trump becomes president, Newsweek reported in September.

Information on all of these ventures is limited because Trump has not released his tax returns. He is poised to become the first major party candidate not to do so by Election Day since Richard Nixon in 1972.

Trump pledged on Sept. 15 that he would “absolutely sever” his connections with the Trump Organization if he is elected president. “I will sever connections, and I’ll have my children and my executives run the company and I won’t discuss it with them,” he said on the television program “Fox and Friends.”

Sasha Chavkin is a staff writer and Michael Hudson is a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Dave Levinthal is senior political reporter at the Center for Public Integrity.

Obama Broke the Law Scouting Locations for Gitmo Detainees

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For the group of detainees who remain designated for continued detention and who are not candidates for U.S. prosecution or detention or transfer to a foreign country, the administration will work with Congress to relocate them from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to a secure detention facility in the United States, while continuing to identify other non-U.S. dispositions. These individuals would be detained under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), P.L. 107-40, as informed by the law of war, and consistent with applicable domestic and international law for such detentions. More here.

Obama Admin Secretly Scouted U.S. Cities to Move Gitmo Terrorists

Administration effort violated U.S. law, lawmakers charge

The Obama administration secretly used taxpayer money to fund an official inspection of several U.S. cities as possible locations to move terrorist inmates held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in violation of federal law, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

The Obama administration ordered the Pentagon to spend U.S. taxpayer funds for a domestic search of “possible Guantanamo detainee relocation” sites, according to documents obtained by the Free Beacon. United States law bars the administration from spending taxpayer money on its effort to move Gitmo inmates onto American soil.

Related reading: Fact sheet on Guantanamo

The disclosure has prompted a congressional inquiry to determine who in the Obama administration ordered the relocation search and how taxpayer funds were authorized for that purpose, according to a formal letter sent by lawmakers to the Defense Department on Monday and obtained by the Free Beacon.

The disclosure of this activity by the Obama administration has renewed concerns on Capitol Hill that the White House will make a last-minute effort to shutter the Gitmo prison and ship the remaining inmates to the United States, despite laws prohibiting the transfers.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt informed lawmakers in a letter late last month that he had discovered documentation showing the Obama administration spent more than $25,000 to scout potential relocation sites in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Charleston, South Carolina, and Florence, Colorado.

Schmidt obtained this information from the Pentagon only after threatening to sue the administration for its refusal to produce documentation on the matter.

“While the amount of money is relatively small—a total of$25,909.53, of which $7,687.20 was spent on the site survey for Fort Leavenworth—the admission raises the concern that the Department of Defense violated the law by knowingly expending these funds while federal law enacted by Congress expressly prohibited the agency from doing so,” Schmidt informed lawmakers in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Free Beacon.

The administration’s behavior has raised concerns in Congress that it is secretly planning to relocate detainees to United States cities without informing local officials and residents.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kansas) told the Free Beacon that Americans should not have the most “hardened terrorists” secretly transferred to their towns by the Obama administration.

“Americans, and particularly Kansans, understand that President Obama’s desire to bring hardened terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. would make our country less safe,” Pompeo said. “In completing these site surveys, the Department of Defense followed neither the letter, nor the spirit of American law. I am proud to stand with my colleagues in condemning this illegal action and encouraging all states to pursue appropriate legal action.”

Pompeo, along with fellow Kansas Republican Reps. Lynn Jenkins and Kevin Yoder, are demanding the Pentagon explain its intentions and why it violated U.S. law in its effort to bring Gitmo inmates to America, according to the Monday letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

“Rather than spending zero dollars on site surveys, as mandated by U.S. law, the Department of Defense has spent over $25,000,” the lawmakers wrote. “This is following neither the letter, nor the spirit of the law.”

The lawmakers seek to determine who in the Pentagon authorized the site surveys, when they took place, and how the taxpayer funds were spent, according to the inquiry. The letter also demanded the names of Obama administration officials and outside contractors who participated in the Gitmo relocation sites surveys.

“We stand with our Senate colleagues in condemning this illegal action and encouraging all states to pursue the appropriate legal action in response,” the lawmakers concluded.

Guantanamo Bay inmates who have been released continue to reengage in terrorism. At least two former inmates have participated in terror operations against U.S. forces since January.

The Obama administration continues to pursue an aggressive effort to free as many inmates as possible before leaving office.

****

The Departments of State and Defense, through the offices of the Special Envoys for

Guantanamo Closure, are implementing an engagement strategy for the 35 detainees currently

approved for transfer, focused on engaging with countries that can accept detainees under

conditions that satisfy both our national security requirements (to substantially mitigate the risk

the detainees pose to the United States or U.S. persons or interests) and our humane treatment

standards. In Fiscal Year 2015, the United States transferred 35 detainees from Guantanamo to

ten countries: Afghanistan (4), Estonia (1), Georgia (3), Kazakhstan (5), Morocco (1), Oman

(10), Saudi Arabia (2), Kuwait (1), Slovakia (2), and Uruguay (6). Thus far in Fiscal Year 2016,

the United States has transferred 23 detainees from Guantanamo to nine countries: Mauritania

(1), the United Kingdom (1), the United Arab Emirates (5), Ghana (2), Kuwait (1), Saudi Arabia

(1), Oman (10), Montenegro (1), and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1). The Administration has

commitments from, or is pursuing commitments from, foreign governments that account for the

remaining 35 detainees approved for transfer. Read the closure plan here which was submitted to key members of Congress.

JASTA Sees its First Lawsuit, this one Against Iran

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Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his family file federal lawsuit against Iranian government

Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his family filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the Iranian government, claiming he was taken hostage and psychologically tortured during his 18 months in prison in an effort by Tehran to influence negotiations for a nuclear agreement with Iran.

Related reading: JASTA, Saudi Arabia

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, says Rezaian was targeted for arrest to gain advantage in a prisoner exchange and to “extort” concessions from the U.S. government in the multinational talks over lifting sanctions if Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear program.

[Read the full lawsuit filed by the Rezaian family]

Iranian officials repeatedly told Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who also was detained for more than two months, that Rezaian had “value” as a bargaining chip for a prisoner swap, the suit says. The filing also links key moments in the nuclear negotiations to Rezaian’s treatment in the judicial system, from arrest to conviction to sentencing, and ultimately his release on the day the deal was implemented. “For nearly eighteen months, Iran held and terrorized Jason for the purpose of gaining negotiating leverage and ultimately exchanging him with the United States for something of value to Iran,” the suit states.

Rezaian, his brother, Ali Rezaian, and their mother, Mary Rezaian, are asking for an unspecified sum for damages under the “terrorism exception” to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. That law generally bars U.S. citizens from suing foreign governments in domestic courts, but exceptions are made for terrorist acts, torture or hostage-taking by countries — including Iran — that the State Department has designated as state sponsors of terrorism. The suit accuses Iran of all three.

[Plane leaves Iran with Post reporter, other Americans, in prisoner swap]

Rezaian and Salehi, who was born in Iran and married Rezaian there, were arrested on July 22, 2014, by Iranian agents wearing surgical masks who forced their way into their apartment and took them for questioning at Evin Prison, a notorious site for political prisoners. Salehi was freed 71 days later on a $32,000 bail provided by her brother-in-law, Ali.

Rezaian was eventually tried and convicted of espionage and related charges, according to Iranian state media accounts. But the Iranian government has never officially disclosed the specifics of his conviction in a closed-door trial, or the sentence imposed by a judge known for meting out harsh punishments.

The lawsuit provides details of Rezaian’s incarceration that have never been publicly revealed before.

Both Rezaian and Salehi were repeatedly subjected to psychological and physical abuse during lengthy interrogations, the suit says. Their captors at turns threatened to dismember or execute them. Interrogated in isolation and often deprived of sleep, each also was warned that the other might be maimed or executed, and the same fate could befall other family members in Iran, according to the filing.

[Detention takes ‘devastating toll’ on Post reporter locked up in Iran]

The ordeal was so intense that Rezaian, Salehi and Rezaian’s brother, Ali, all contemplated suicide, the suit says. Now — almost nine months after Rezaian and four other U.S. citizens were released on the day the nuclear deal was implemented—Salehi, the Rezaian brothers and their mother are still afflicted with trauma and guilt, according to the suit.

“For 544 days, Jason suffered such physical mistreatment and severe psychological abuse in Evin Prison that he will never be the same,” the suit states. “He will require specialized medical and other treatment for the rest of his life.”

Salehi is not a plaintiff in the suit. Nor is The Washington Post. Rezaian is currently on leave from The Post for a year as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University.

“Iran’s unconscionable actions have inflicted deep and lasting wounds on The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian and his family,” said Executive Editor Martin Baron, who during the reporter’s imprisonment often criticized what he called Iran’s “system of injustice.”

“This legal filing is a stark telling of Iran’s brutal and heartless treatment of an innocent journalist and his wife, and the impact on those who love him. While this legal action is being taken solely by Jason and his family, The Post continues to support the Rezaians through their long and painful recovery.’’

The Rezaian lawsuit is the latest attempt by Americans to have the U.S. justice system provide compensation for harms inflicted by the Iranian government — in particular, by the powerful and hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that fiercely opposed the nuclear deal and has tried to thwart many initiatives of President Hassan Rouhani, a relative pragmatist. The IRGC is named as a co-defendant in the suit.

“This was really one of the few ways they felt they could try to hold Iran publicly accountable,” said David Bowker, Rezaian’s attorney. “Ideally, it will deter this kind of behavior toward other innocent people.”

Rezaian and his family declined to discuss the case, deferring questions to their lawyer.

In a number of suits brought against it over the years, Iran has not responded, resulting in default judgments.

Congress and U.S. courts have provided a legal framework for Americans to sue Iran and be compensated. The State Department has labeled Iran the top state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Also on the list are Sudan and Syria.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law allowing American victims of terrorism and their families to collect almost $2 billion in seized Iranian assets. The case involved relatives of people killed or injured in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Iran labeled the decision “confiscation” and “theft.”

The closest precedent to Rezaian’s case involves Nik Moradi, an Iranian American who was seized during a family visit in 2007 and accused of spying for the United States. More than six months before his release on bail, he said he was subjected to physical and mental torture during interrogations. In 2013, Moradi and his wife sued Iran in U.S. federal court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The couple was awarded $20 million in a default judgment after Iran failed to respond.

One possible venue for securing payment on a judgment is the Victims of State Sponsors of Terrorism Fund, created last year by Congress to compensate the Americans held hostage in Iran during the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution. It also set aside money for victims with court judgments against state sponsors of terrorism, funded by money from a civil penalty paid by BNP Paribas bank for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

The lawsuit provides dark glimpses of Rezaian’s 50 days in solitary in a small, dank, cockroach-infested cell. Anxiety and depression made him hallucinate, as he perceived the walls moving and talking. The cell was constantly lit, and a noisy fan prevented sleep. He slept on the floor, and prison officials eventually gave him tranquilizers to induce sleep. His food sometimes had concrete, rocks, dirt and other inedible objects mixed in.

“During his time in solitary confinement, Jason believed he was losing his mind,” the suit says.

In the initial months of his imprisonment, Rezaian was taken blindfolded several times a day to an underground room for interrogations that lasted hours. He was forced to write down his answers, which prison officials translated into Farsi before trying to coerce him to sign without explaining the translations.

In an effort to get him to confess to espionage, the suit says, one interrogator threatened him with beheading. Another held out the carrot of a video confession as his only chance for freedom.

“They threatened Jason with physical mutilation, such as cutting off his limbs, and repeatedly told Jason that he would never see Yeganeh alive again,” the suit says.

Though Salehi is not a plaintiff, her agony is clear in the dry legalese.

During her detention, Salehi was blindfolded while interrogators hit the table, broke glass and kicked her chair, startling her. One interrogator threatened to cut off her left leg and right hand or arm. They told her they would throw her husband off a cliff if she did not incriminate him.

By the time she was released, her legs would go numb and she sometimes fainted when sitting down. She had to shear off her hair because it was so matted. She had skin lesions. On her infrequent prison visits to see her husband, she sometimes was made to don a prison uniform and told she might be detained again, the suit says. Convinced her husband would die in Evin Prison, she considered killing herself to draw attention to his plight.

Ali Rezaian, who quit his job to work full-time campaigning for his brother’s release, also grew despondent, according to the suit. Iranian agents tailed him when he went to Geneva to appeal for help from the U.N. Human Rights Council and his mother was held against her will in Iran.

[Jason Rezaian works to reclaim his life after return to the U.S.]

“He contemplated suicide in the fall of 2015, having lost faith that his brother would ever be released,” the suit states. “At the time, Ali believed that only by ending his own life could he prompt action by defendants or others, to free Jason.”

Jason Rezaian now experiences depression, sleeplessness, short-term memory loss and other symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, the suit says. He grows anxious in large crowds, fears for his family’s safety and has grown more “detached” from them. He sees a psychologist.

“Plaintiffs live in constant fear that Iranian agents are spying on them, plotting additional acts of terrorism and planning ways to hurt them and their family members again,” the suit says.

Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.

Read more:

Rezaian’s wife and mother recall tortuous final hours in Iran

A triumphant return for Jason Rezaian

Russia v. United States: It is Getting Colder as Russia Destroys Aleppo

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John Kerry announces the bi-lateral talks are over.

Russia’s response:

Указ Президента Российской Федерации от 03.10.2016 № 511 “О приостановлении Российской Федерацией действия Соглашения между Правительством Российской Федерации и Правительством Соединенных Штатов Америки об утилизации плутония, заявленного как плутоний, не являющийся более необходимым для целей обороны, обращению с ним и сотрудничеству в этой области и протоколов к этому Соглашению”

Translation: Decree of the President of the Russian Federation from 03.10.2016 # 511 “on the suspension by the Russian Federation Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the United States of America on the disposition of plutonium designated as no longer required for defence purposes, and cooperation in this area and the protocols to this agreement”

If you can read Russian, the document is here.

This was signed in 2010 between Hillary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday suspended an agreement with the United States for disposal of weapons-grade plutonium because of “unfriendly” acts by Washington, the Kremlin said.

A Kremlin spokesman said Putin had signed a decree suspending the 2010 agreement under which each side committed to destroy tonnes of weapons-grade material because Washington had not been implementing it and because of current tensions in relations.

The two former Cold War adversaries are at loggerheads over a raft of issues including Ukraine, where Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supports pro-Moscow separatists, and the conflict in Syria.

The deal, signed in 2000 but which did not come into force until 2010, was being suspended due to “the emergence of a threat to strategic stability and as a result of unfriendly actions by the United States of America towards the Russian Federation”, the preamble to the decree said.

It also said that Washington had failed “to ensure the implementation of its obligations to utilize surplus weapons-grade plutonium”.

The 2010 agreement, signed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called on each side to dispose of 34 tonnes of plutonium by burning in nuclear reactors.

Clinton said at the time that that was enough material to make almost 17,000 nuclear weapons. Both sides then viewed the deal as a sign of increased cooperation between the two former adversaries toward a joint goal of nuclear non-proliferation.

“For quite a long time, Russia had been implementing it (the agreement) unilaterally,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists on Monday.

“Now, taking into account this tension (in relations) in general … the Russian side considers it impossible for the current state of things to last any longer.”

Ties between Moscow and Washington plunged to freezing point over Crimea and Russian support for separatists in eastern Ukraine after protests in Kiev toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich.

Washington led a campaign to impose Western economic sanctions on Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis.

Relations soured further last year when Russia deployed its warplanes to an air base in Syria to provide support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops fighting rebels.

The rift has widened in recent weeks, with Moscow accusing Washington of not delivering on its promise to separate units of moderate Syrian opposition from “terrorists”.

Huge cost overruns have also long been another threat to the project originally estimated at a total of $5.7 billion.

Meanwhile what Russia is doing to Aleppo is beyond the definition of war crimes.

NBCNews: Russian-made cluster bombs — weapons that kill indiscriminately and inflict long-lasting damage — were used in an attack on at least one hospital in the ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo last week, a video obtained by NBC News appears to show.

The video shows two unexploded submunitions amid the rubble at the M10 hospital in rebel-held eastern Aleppo following a morning airstrike on Sept. 28. Several experts and sources independently identified the devices as Russian-made ShOAB 0.5 cluster submunitions, bomblets delivered by an air-delivered scattering device called the RBK-500. Both are known to be used by both the Russian and Syrian air forces.

However, it is difficult, even for specialists in unexploded ordnance disposal, to definitively identify such munitions in the field. The ShOAB 0.5 is visually similar to a U.S.-made series of bomblets.

Image: Medics inspect the damage outside a field hospital after an airstrike in the rebel-held al-Maadi neighbourhood of Aleppo

Medics inspect the damage outside a field hospital after an airstrike in the rebel-held al-Maadi neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria on Sept. 28, 2016. ABDALRHMAN ISMAIL / Reuters

The use of cluster bombs on the hospital — part of a larger series of strikes that also hit a second hospital and a nearby bakery — underscores the relentless brutality of Syria’s civil war, which lurched back into violence last month after the disintegration of a brief cease-fire. The casualties include hundreds of children killed or injured in Aleppo by a myriad of weapons falling on the city.

The hospitals were among the few facilities that remained to treat the hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the brutal new government offensive on eastern Aleppo. It is not clear whether the second hospital, called M2, was hit with cluster bombs.

NBC News visited both hospitals and spoke to medical staff there. Among the patients at M2 was a prematurely born infant struggling to survive: Miriam, born on Sept. 10 when her mother, seven months pregnant, went into labor during the airstrike.

“These kids are innocent, and they came into this world under very difficult circumstances, they came into this world during a war,” said Um Mohammad, the nurse who had been tending the children and infants in the hospital. Um Mohammad is a pseudonym, meaning “mother of Mohammad.”

At M2, the attack started at about 4:00 a.m., according to Dr. Mohammad Abu Rajab, a physician at the hospital who uses a pseudonym to avoid reprisals for his work in opposition-controlled areas.

“This has resulted in the hospital being taken out of service completely and indefinitely,” Abu Rajab said. “This was systematic and direct targeting of this hospital, which was home to pediatric and women’s health specialists.” A must read of the rest of the article here.

Obama Admin Admits No Plan B for Syria

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Reuters: The United States called the assault on Aleppo by Syria and Russia “a gift” to Islamic State on Thursday, saying it was sowing doom and would generate more recruits for the militant group.

Moscow vowed to press on with its offensive in Syria, while U.S. officials searched for a tougher response to Russia’s decision to ignore the peace process and seek a military victory on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

United Nations aid chief Stephen O’Brien urged the 15-member U.N. Security Council to stop “tolerating the utter disregard for the most basic provisions of international humanitarian law.”

The sanctions program on Syria began in earnest under the Bush administration yet given the enormous death count and destruction, the last sanctions order by Barack Obama was:

On May 1, 2012, the President issued E.O. 13608 pursuant to, inter alia, IEEPA
and the NEA, finding that efforts by foreign persons to engage in activities
intended to evade U.S. economic and financial sanctions with respect to Syria
and Iran undermine United States efforts to address the national emergencies
declared in E.O. 13338, E.O. 12957, E.O. 12938, and E.O. 13224, and taking
additional steps pursuant to those national emergencies.

Given the violations, espionage aggressions and proven hacking by Russia, the Obama administration has not signed new sanctions on Russia. The most recent were those imposed during the Russia/Ukraine hostilities. So it stands to reason, there is no Plan B as noted below.

   

An Obama administration official painfully struggled to explain the ‘Plan B’ for Syria

A senior Obama administration official stumbled Thursday when pressed on the US plan to deal with the crisis in Syria, appearing unable to provide details about what comes next after a failed ceasefire.

BusinessInsider: Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, repeatedly pressed Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a committee hearing.

The US has been searching for a way to help resolve a five-year civil war between the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and led to the proliferation of extremist groups like ISIS inside the country. But a ceasefire deal brokered with Russia earlier this month fell apart.

“I’d like to understand what Plan B is,” Corker said. “The mysterious Plan B that has been referred to since February, the mysterious Plan B that was supposed to be leverage to get Russia to quit killing innocent people, to get Assad to quit killing innocent people. Just explain to us the elements of Plan B.”

Blinken seemed unsure of the specifics of the so-called Plan B.

“In the first instance, Plan B is the consequence of the failure as a result of Russia’s actions of Plan A,” he said. “In that, what is likely to happen now is if the agreement cannot be followed through on and Russia reneges totally on its commitments, which it appears to have done, is this is going, of course, to be bad for everyone, but it’s going to be bad first and foremost…”

Corker cut him off, asking for more specifics.

“I want to hear about Plan B,” Corker said. “I understand all the context here.”

Blinken pressed on.

“I think, sir, this is important because Russia has a profound incentive in trying to make this work,” Blinken said. “It can’t win in Syria. It can only prevent Assad from losing. If this now gets to the point where the civil war actually accelerates, all of the outside patrons are going to throw in more and more weaponry against Russia. Russia will be left propping up Assad in an ever-smaller piece of Syria under constant assault…”

Corker cut in again.

“I understand that,” he said. “What is Plan B? Give me the elements of Plan B.”

Blinken tried again, but was still vague on details.

“Again, the consequences I think to Russia as well as to the regime will begin to be felt as a result of Plan A not being implemented because of Russia’s actions,” Blinken said. “Second, as I indicated, the president has asked all of the agencies to put forward options, some familiar, some new, that we are very actively reviewing. When we are able to work through these in the days ahead, we will have an opportunity to come back and talk about them in detail.”

Corker didn’t seem satisfied.

“OK, so let me just say what we already know,” he said. “There is no Plan B.”

This is a familiar criticism of the Obama administration’s Syria policy.

Mutasem Alsyofi of the Syrian Civil Society Declaration Initiative said in a statement last week that Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t able to articulate a coherent plan for Syria when he met with a Syrian delegation in New York City.

“Kerry’s plan is to do more of the same — despite the repeated failure of US attempts to strike a deal with Russia,” Alsyofi said. “Syrians need a clear guarantee that the continued killing of civilians will be met with action to protect civilians. We do not need further failed agreements with Russia.”

The US recently worked with Russia to implement a ceasefire between the Assad regime and rebels in Syria, excluding extremist groups. But the deal — referred to as “Plan A” during Blinken’s testimony — fell apart before it was seen through to completion.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the administration’s “Plan B” for Syria earlier this year, citing unnamed US officials who described a covert operation to provide moderate rebels with more powerful weapons. Blinken did not mention such a program during his testimony.

Syrian opposition alliance enlists former Rep. Kingston

Sept. 30, 2016

An alliance of moderate Syrian political and military groups has enlisted Squire Patton Boggs lobbyists, including former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), for advocacy support, according to a new lobbying disclosure.

The High Negotiations Committee of the Syrian Opposition, which released a new transition plan for the country earlier this month, is supported by numerous Western and Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey. The HNC reportedly excludes Syrian Kurds, who have exchanged blows with Turkey in recent years.

In addition to the end of the Assad regime, the coalition is reportedly working toward democratic elections, free press and a new constitution, among other issues.