International Interest in Iranian Economy after U.N. Resolution

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution formalizing the Iran nuclear agreement reached in Vienna. The resolution will not enter force for 90 days, but some countries are already moving to thaw economic relations with Tehran. Germany will hold an economic summit with Iran sometime later this summer or early this fall, according to an Iranian news agency. It will be the first economic conference between the two countries since 2002, before the imposition of U.N. and European sanctions. Other firms are expected to wait until the U.S. Congress votes on the agreement, sometime within the next two months. “The amount of interest in Iran has been unbelievable,” Tehran-based foreign investment specialist Ramin Rabii told the Guardian. “This is a geopolitical earthquake.”

Some members of the U.S. Congress chafed at the U.N. resolution, saying it undermined their review process. Secretary of State John Kerry responded by noting that the United States had secured the 90-day delay in implementing the U.N. resolution to allow that process of review. “But frankly, some of these other countries were quite resistant to the idea as sovereign nations that they are subject to the U.S. Congress,” he noted. “So we worked out a compromise.”

Israel to Stop Cross-Border Medical Treatment of Rebels

Israel will no longer allow wounded members of Jabhat al-Nusra into the country for treatment, and will provide medical care to civilians only at the border, according to an IDF officer who acknowledged that some al-Qaeda-linked fighters had “infiltrated” Israel’s humanitarian medical relief efforts. The shift is a response to accusations from Hezbollah that Israel is providing support to Syrian rebels. Israel’s medical treatment program has also been attacked by Druze residents in the Golan Heights in retaliation for Nusra attacks on Druze communities in Syria.

Headlines

• The death toll from the Houthi forces’ shelling of Dar Saad, a town outside of Aden, has risen to more than 100 people.

• Turkish officials said they will boost border security with Syria in response to a suicide bombing that killed 30 people in the town of Suruc; the attack prompted protests that were broken up with water cannons in major cities in Turkey.

• The Islamic State has begun imposing new limits on internet access for residents in its de facto capital of Raqqa; the city is under growing pressure from Kurdish militias and the United States has been dropping leaflets that state “Freedom will come.”

• U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter met with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon yesterday to discuss U.S. security assurances after the nuclear agreement; Carter will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu today.

• Governments of EU member states failed to meet a deadline to find homes to relocate 40,000 migrants as part of a resettlement plan to accommodate the influx of Middle Eastern and African individuals fleeing insecurity across the Mediterranean.

Arguments and Analysis

“What Will Obama Do for Syrian Rebels?” (Micah Zenko, Politics, Power and Preventive Action)

“Either the White House has not decided what degree of support the United States will provide, or it has simply refused to state this publicly for over ten months. Given that the United States has made such a consequential overt commitment to these rebels, this should be made plain for Congress and the American public immediately. More troubling, Carter admitted that the United States has not even told the rebels what support they would receive once they were in Syria; presumably, they are finding this out the hard way now. One can imagine many situations where the United States would be forced to deepen its involvement in the Syria civil war on behalf of these initial sixty rebels.”

“A Self-Defeating Strategy on Iran” (Jon Alterman, Center for Strategic and International Studies)

“If the robust secondary sanctions contained in U.S. law were applied in defiance of international consensus, there would surely be a rush to develop robust financial instruments that would be beyond U.S. reach. The reason, of course, is that sovereign states agree to abide by international agreements, not by the political vicissitudes of the United States in an election year. The UN Security Council Resolution, which is likely to arrive today, will drive home the notion that this agreement — and not some imaginary perfect agreement that has not been made and probably could not be made — is the basis for international action going forward.”

-J. Dana Stuster

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