Irã: um possível "turning point" na teocracia autoritária dos aiatolás? - Ishaan Tharoor (WP)

By Ishaan Tharoor with Ruby Mellen   Email Dear readers, We'll be landing in your inbox a little earlier starting today. We're also sporting a new design. As always, we welcome your feedback — drop us a line here — and appreciate your loyal readership. Best wishes, The Today's WorldView team The Washington Post, December 4, 2019 Iran’s bloody crackdown could mark a historic turning point Women walk past a building damaged during recent protests, in Shahriar, Iran, on Nov. 20. (Vahid Salemi/AP)   Iranian authorities finally admitted that they killed protesters in the country’s streets. On Monday evening, state media said the country’s security officials used lethal force against “thugs and rioters” last month after protests broke out in reaction to a gas price increase. Iran’s Interior Ministry announced last week that protests hit more than 100 towns and cities in 29 of the country’s 31 provinces and led to 731 banks, 70 gas stations and 140 government sites set ablaze amid the protests. A nationwide Internet blackout obscured coverage of the demonstrations, making outside corroboration difficult. But activists, international organizations and local journalists have pieced together a startling portrait of what took place: an unprecedented wave of state-sanctioned violence against unarmed protesters that may have led to as many as 450 deaths in the first four days after protests flared on Nov. 15. Based on its collation of reports and video footage — thousands of clips recorded on mobile phones have still made their way out of the country — Amnesty International estimated the death toll to be at least 208 people, with “the real figure likely to be higher.”  Though Tehran was affected by disturbances, the most dramatic scenes came from poorer towns and working-class suburbs elsewhere in the country. A piece by New York Times reporters Farnaz Fassihi and Rick Gladstone looked at a grisly massacre in the southwest city of Mahshahr, where members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard allegedly gunned down some 40 to 100 unarmed protesters who had fled to a marsh. The Times quoted an unemployed 24-year-old college graduate who participated in protests blocking roads in the city and who said his best friend and older cousin were among those killed. “He said they both had been shot in the chest and their bodies were returned to the families five days later, only after they had signed paperwork promising not to hold funerals or memorial services and not to give interviews to media,” reported the Times. ​The events of the past month revealed a deep well of discontent among ordinary Iranians. Officials in the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have hailed the uprising as the result of the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy, which has choked off the oil revenue the regime desperately needs to help subsidize sectors of the country’s flagging economy. But ordinary Iranians have been bitterly affected by the bite of U.S. sanctions, too, which have raised the price of food and threatened access to key medicines. Hard-liners at odds with President Hassan Rouhani’s administration sought to piggy back off the discontent and distance themselves from the government’s decision to cut subsidies, but they were also caught off guard by the scale of the protest movement. The protesters’ anger over the economy dovetailed with long-standing frustrations over mismanagement and the corruption of political elites and in some places prompted calls for the exit of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The stunning death toll from just a few days of unrest makes clear that Khamenei and his allies are worried. A decade ago, 72 people were killed in months of protests after an election widely seen as fraudulent. This time, with hundreds dead in the span of a few days, something more seismic seemed to be at work. “The recent protests are different than the protests of 2009, when people took to the streets after Reformist presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi declared that the ballots were rigged. Those protests had leaders and political goals,” explained Rohollah Faghihi in Al-Monitor. “The 2019 events have no leader or specific goal. … [They] are an expression of deep-rooted anger and pain.”  Mousavi, who remains under house arrest, issued a warning to the regime over the weekend, likening the crackdown last month to a massacre in 1978 that preceded the downfall of Iran’s shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic. “The killers of the year 1978 were the representatives of a nonreligious regime and the agents and shooters of November 2019 are the representatives of a religious government,” read an online postattributed to Mousavi. “Then the commander in chief was the shah and today, here, the supreme leader with absolute authority.”  Other analysts suggest a more apt analogue may lie slightly further back in history. Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, pointed to large-scale protests that broke out in 1963 in reaction to the shah’s reform plans. Thousands may have been slaughtered by security forces, including an infamous crackdown in Tehran on June 5 of that year. “The gang leaders responsible for the Tehran uprising were tried and hanged, and all physical signs of destruction in Tehran were quickly removed,” Yale historian Abbas Amanat wrote in his 2017 tome on Iran’s modern history. “Yet the psychological wounds inflicted by the revolt remained unhealed.”  Nasr told Today’s WorldView that the moment “marked a turning point” for Iran, which “radicalized the opposition and united it against the monarchy” and set Iran on its way to the 1979 revolution. “The lesson of 1963 is that we cannot always expect this sort of bloodletting to lead to a bigger conflagration immediately, but it could ultimately manifest itself in politics down the road,” he said.

Quando a submissão sobe à cabeça - revista Veja sobre a postura do chanceler

Até a revista Veja estranhou que o chanceler se tenha posicionado do lado dos EUA, sem sequer se preocupar em defender os interesses brasileiros neste caso de aplicação extra-territorial, portanto ilegal, de medidas unilaterais contra o Irã, importante parceiro comercial do Brasil. 
Vocês conhecem o "Estado da Lei"? Pois é, ele devia estar um pouco confuso na hora de responder, temeroso de não ofender seus mestres americanos e seus patronos brasileiros, quando o mínimo que deveria fazer seria demonstrar pelo menos a intenção de questionar os EUA nessa atitude que visa impedir o Brasil de comerciar legitimamente com qualquer país do mundo.
Os EUA, a despeito das sanções impostas pelos sucessivos governos e reforçadas por Trump, são o maior fornecedor de alimentos e de medicamentos a Cuba.
Ou seja, os EUA podem comerciar com quem desejarem, e o chanceler se mostra submisso às medidas americanas em prejuízo de interesses econômicos do Brasil.
Que vergonha...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Chanceler diz que Petrobras pode sofrer sanções dos EUA
revista Veja, 26/07/2019

O ministro das Relações Exteriores, Ernesto Araújo, afirmou nesta quinta-feira, 25, que a Petrobras corre o risco de ser punida pelos Estados Unidos caso abasteça os dois navios do Irã que estão estacionados no Paraná. No entanto, acrescentou que a decisão do presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), Dias Toffoli, em favor do abastecimento das embarcações deve ser cumprida.

“É um tema que está na Justiça, nosso entendimento é de que as partes envolvidas têm que seguir a decisão da Justiça. Nós temos chamado a atenção ao fato de que a Petrobras poderia estar sujeita a ter prejuízos em suas atividades nos Estados Unidos. De acordo com as medidas que estão em vigor nos Estados Unidos, determinado comportamento da empresa por ter esse tipo de repercussão”, disse.  “Achamos que a situação permanece, mas existe o Estado da Lei”, completou.

A declaração do chanceler causou surpresa por não vir acompanhada de nenhum questionamento a esse mecanismo de retaliação americano, que atinge companhias de qualquer país com negócios com firmas desse setor iraniano, nem ao mérito dessas medidas dos Estados Unidos contra Teerã. Araújo acatou a ameaça americana como dado da realidade e esquivou-se também de defender o direito do Brasil de garantir a viabilidade de seu comércio com o Irã e qualquer outro parceiro comercial.

Na noite de quarta-feira 24, Tofolli  determinou que a Petrobras abastecesse os dois cargueiros. O STF informou que o ministro indeferiu o pedido da estatal brasileira e manteve a decisão do Tribunal de Justiça (TJ) do Paraná, que tinha determinado o fornecimento do combustível. Ao recusar-se a fornecer o combustível, a Petrobras alegava que poderia ser punida pois as embarcações são alvo de sanções americanas.

Bavand e Temeh, as embarcações ancoradas no Porto de Paranaguá desde o início de junho por falta de combustível, têm a missão de desembarcar ureia ao Brasil e carregar milho ao Irã. Maior importador de produtos brasileiros no Oriente Médio, o Irã disparou a ameaça de vetar as importações de produtos do Brasil se os seus navios não forem abastecidos. Ao Irã podem se seguir outros destinos de bens agropecuários no Oriente Médio.

“Eu disse aos brasileiros que são eles que devem resolver o problema, não os iranianos”, afirmou embaixador do Irã em Brasília, Seyed Ali Saghaeyan na quarta-feira, 24. “Mas se não for resolvido, talvez as autoridades em Teerã tenham que tomar algumas decisões, porque isso é o livre-comércio e outros países estão disponíveis”, agregou, ao destacar que não haverá problemas em encontrar outros fornecedores de milho.

Quase guerra EUA contra o Irã: Trump como sempre mentindo - Ishaan Tharoor (WP)

A verdadeira razão de porque Trump retrocedeu na ordem de bombardear o Irã é, como em todos os outros casos, puramente eleitoral: ele não quer perder as eleições do ano que vem, se por acaso ordenar uma nova guerra.
Ele jamais se comoveria em salvar 150 mil vidas iranianas.
Ele só pensa nele mesmo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Can Trump put out the fire he started?

Ishaan Tharoor

The Washington Post, June 23, 2019

(Zach Gibson/Bloomberg)

It’s a strange thing for leftist doves to find themselves on the same side of an issue as Tucker Carlson. The right-wing Fox News anchor known for his unabashed white nationalism was among the skeptics who privately urged President Trump not to launch a military strike against Iran last week. After Iranian authorities downed a U.S. surveillance drone above the Strait of Hormuz, the White House plotted retaliatory action. Key figures in the administration — chiefly, national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — were reportedly keen on hitting back. A plan of attack was put into place.

But on Friday, Trump took to social media and congratulated himself on reining back a U.S. military that was “cocked and loaded” to strike at Iranian targets. Carlson’s thinking — that Trump’s nationalist base is uninterested in, if not wholly opposed to, costly military entanglements abroad — appeared to be on the president’s mind. He suggested the more effective approach would be for the United States to maintain its current pressure campaign on Iran, including slapping on more economic sanctions Monday. (The United States did carry out cyberattacks on Iranian systems last week.)

“I’m getting a lot of praise for what I did. My expression is, ‘We have plenty of time,’ " Trump told reporters Saturday, referring to his decision to halt an attack that would have claimed Iranian lives. “Everyone was saying I’m a warmonger, and now they’re saying I’m a dove, and I say I’m neither. I didn’t like the idea of them unknowingly shooting down an unmanned drone and we killing 150 people.”

Trump also publicly upbraided Bolton for his “tough posture” and hawkish mentality. In private, Trump was said to be complaining about the assembled hard-liners in his inner circle. “These people want to push us into a war, and it’s so disgusting,” Trump told one confidant about his own advisers, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We don’t need any more wars.”

On one count, Trump is right. He is neither a warmonger nor a dove. If Trump had his way, the United States would likely have a smaller military footprint in the Middle East and lean more aggressively on its allies in the Gulf to execute its regional agenda. But for all Trump’s insistence that he is opposed to war, he still is the one who laid the powder for a dangerous flare-up.

The showdown over Iran was just the latest instance of Trump playing both arsonist and fireman. The current state of tensions is a direct consequence of the Trump administration reneging on the terms of the Iranian nuclear deal, reimposing sanctions and enacting other measuresto squeeze the regime in Tehran. All of this was done against the wishes of key U.S. allies in Europe and amid the protestations of much of the foreign policy establishment in Washington.

“Trump’s usual shtick is to paper over the problem of his creation and then declare victory, but this week he added a biblical dimension to the drama-making,” wrote Politico’s Jack Shafer. “First, he assumed the persona of the vengeful god, commanding an attack on Iran in retaliation for its shoot-down of a $200 million Navy surveillance drone. Then he ducked into the wardrobe for a costume change to emerge in the cloak of the Prince of Peace and called off the strike.”

It’s a somewhat unconvincing act, especially as Trump’s hawkish advisers remain on the warpath. Both Bolton and Pompeo journeyed to the Middle East over the weekend, talking tough on Iran and vowing to prevent Tehran from building nuclear weapons — a prospect the U.N.'s atomic agency and the other permanent members of Security Council all believed had been avoided by the nuclear deal Trump rejected.

Bolton appeared in Israel alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hailed the “crippling American sanctions” placed on Iran. Pompeo is slated for a whirlwind set of talks about Iran on Monday in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two Arab monarchies most bent on countering the Islamic Republic.

“Pompeo, who last year issued a list of 12 broad demands for change in Iran, shows no signs of softening his outreach to the Islamic Republic,” wrote my colleague Carol Morello. “He began his travels lashing out at Tehran, belittling its explanation of why it downed a U.S. drone last week as ‘childlike’ and not worthy of belief.”

Pompeo tried to steer Trump toward military action last week, and he retains significant influence within the White House. “In an administration that churns through cabinet members at a dizzying pace, few have survived as long as Pompeo — and none have as much stature, a feat he has achieved through an uncanny ability to read the president’s desires and translate them into policy and public messaging,” noted the New York Times. “He has also taken advantage of a leadership void at the Defense Department, which has gone nearly six months without a confirmed secretary.”

America’s top diplomat also rubbished claims that Trump had sent a message to Iran via a diplomatic backchannel run by Oman. The president says that he is open to talks with the regime in Tehran, but few experts believe this administration is on track to lead Iran to the table.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesman for Iranian nuclear negotiators and a scholar at Princeton University, told the Atlantic that, “by destroying the deal, Trump destroyed confidence and any chance for future negotiations.”

And tensions seem bound to spike again.

“Avoiding further escalation will be difficult, given both sides’ determination not to back down,” Philip Gordon, a former Obama administration official, wrote in Foreign Affairs. “A new nuclear negotiation, which Trump claims to want, would be one way to avoid a clash. But Iran is not likely to enter talks with an administration it does not trust, and even less likely to agree to the sort of far-reaching deal Trump says is necessary.”

Negotiations With Iran. Trump’s Approach Isn’t Working - William J. Burns, Jake Sullivan

IDEAS

We Led Successful Negotiations With Iran. Trump’s Approach Isn’t Working

Coercive diplomacy has worked before, but coercion without diplomacy will not.

William J. Burns

President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Jake Sullivan

 

Senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Atlantic, May 16, 2019

A year after abandoning the Iran nuclear agreement, President Donald Trump is doubling down on a risky and an ill-fated “maximum pressure” campaign. He’s tried to brand this strategy as a kind of coercive diplomacy, purportedly aimed at an elusive “better deal.” But so far, his strategy is all coercion and no diplomacy. His aggressive escalation of sanctions, the blustery rhetoric of his senior officials, and his administration’s lack of direct engagement with Tehran betray a fundamentally different goal: the capitulation or implosion of the Iranian regime.

Painful experience has shown that neither of those objectives is realistic. In the meantime, two sets of risks loom large.

The first is the risk of a violent collision, whether intended or unintended. In the past week, we’ve seen the U.S. announce the dispatch of an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers in response to perceived Iranian threats against American personnel in the region. We’ve also seen reported attacks on shipping and oil infrastructure around the Persian Gulf. With American forces and Iranian proxies in tight quarters across Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf, and no direct communications between Washington and Tehran, either side could misjudge or misinterpret the other’s moves.

Trump’s hawkish advisers and the hard-liners in Tehran could easily become mutual enablers in pushing a crisis up the escalatory ladder. The idea that the conflict is inevitable can produce momentum of its own, as can the sort of hubris that led to a disastrous war in Iraq in 2003. And should Iran abandon the deal altogether, the odds of conflict will grow larger still.

An escalating conflict brings with it an increased risk of significant collateral damage. Fissures between the U.S. and our European allies are widening as a result of our withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, our subsequent pressure campaign, and our erratic saber-rattling. We’re also eroding the long-term utility of economic sanctions with our reckless unilateralism. Even our closest partners have begun to talk publicly about reducing exposure to the American financial system as a hedge against U.S. economic pressure.

We’ve seen coercive diplomacy succeed with Iran—this is not how it works.

We’re the two negotiators who led the secret bilateral talks with the Iranians that paved the way for the interim and comprehensive nuclear deals between Iran and the so-called P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. The United States built broad international pressure to bring Tehran to the table—the political leverage of an international community united in its determination to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon; the military leverage of a credible threat of force; and the economic leverage of sanctions that ultimately produced a 50 percent drop in Iran’s oil exports and in the value of its currency.

That pressure was necessary but not sufficient, because pressure is not an end in itself. It was coupled with a realistic aim—a sharply constrained, tightly limited, and closely monitored civilian nuclear program—and a willingness to engage directly with the Iranians, not through empty summitry but over many months of arduous negotiations.

Now, after more than a year of coercion, with no capitulation or implosion in sight, and no shortage of risks on the horizon, it’s time to take diplomacy seriously again. That means going beyond the repetition of terms the other side won’t ever accept. The best way forward for the Trump administration is to signal privately that its maximalist demands are not carved in stone and pursue a more realistic agenda on nuclear issues. That starts with working to extend the nuclear deal’s timelines, and recognizing that further sanctions relief will be necessary to encourage Iranian acceptance; it means talking quietly about securing the release of Americans detained in brutal Iranian prisons; it means probing for possible understandings on Iran’s ballistic-missile programs; and it means encouraging dialogue on the wars in Afghanistan and Yemen, where Iran will be a player in any eventual settlement.

Contacts with the Iranians are not a reward for bad behavior, and we should have no illusions that they will engage productively on all our concerns. But diplomacy is the best way to test intentions and define the realm of the possible, repair the damage our unilateral turn has inflicted on our international partnerships, and invest in more effective coercion if and when it’s needed to focus minds in Tehran.

Coercive diplomacy—when both elements of the approach are carefully synchronized—can deliver. On the other hand, coercion without diplomacy can lead to huge blunders in the Middle East. We’ve seen that before. A lot is at stake over the coming months. Given the impulses and track record of this administration, it’s hard to be optimistic, and easy to see more trouble ahead.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Ambassador WILLIAM J. BURNS is President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Deputy Secretary of State, and author of The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for its Renewal. 

JAKE SULLIVAN is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was the national-security adviser for Vice President Joe Biden, the director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State, and the deputy chief of staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sim, o Brasil deve se interessar pelo Iran - Clovis Rossi (FSP)

O jornalista e editorialista da Folha de S. Paulo, Clovis Rossim chama a atenção para um conflito que ameaça desestabilizar não só o Oriente Médio e o mundo inteiro, como também precipitar uma crise econômica capaz de afundar um pouco mais o Brasil, que já se encontra, segundo o ministro Paulo Guedes, no "fundo do poço".
O que vai fazer o nosso chanceler, ou melhor os chanceleres, o real e o nominal?
Imagino que, por seus instintos, escolheriam ficar do lado de Trump, o que seria um desastre, não necessariamente para o que pode acontecer em seguida. Independentemente disso, seria um desastre para nossa já arranhada credibilidade, para nossa já desgastada imagem internacional.
Um bookmaker inglês recomendaria, talvez, apostar na Lei de Murphy. Segundo esse tipo de especulador, nunca, ninguém, em qualquer época, perdeu dinheiro apostando na estupidez humana.
Segundo Einstein, por outro lado, existem duas coisas infinitas: a expansão do universo e a estupidez humana, e ele não tinha certeza quanto à primeira...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

O Irã é, sim, assunto para o Brasil

Mas para entender, e não isolar o país persa

Folha de S. Paulo, 16.mai.2019 às 2h52

Se sobrou alguma vida inteligente no governo Bolsonaro, Israel ofereceu a ele uma bela oportunidade para sair das alucinações e da consequente paralisia. Pedir que o Brasil entre no complicado jogo do contencioso iraniano, como revelado nesta quarta-feira (15) pela Folha, é a chance para a diplomacia brasileira estudar o que fazer a respeito.

Para deixar claro: não se trata de o Brasil se alinhar automaticamente a Estados Unidos e Israel na ofensiva contra o Irã. Trata-se, isto sim, de definir uma política para a região. Não pode haver melhor momento para tanto, se se considerar o potencial explosivo da presente crise.

O Crisis Group, especialista em analisar crises e propor soluções para elas, faz um bom resumo do momento: "Um choque não é inevitável, mas bem pode ocorrer --deliberadamente ou como produto de erro de cálculo".

As consequências desse choque seriam calamitosas para os países da região mas também para a economia internacional, dada a alta dependência do livre fluxo de petróleo pelo golfo Pérsico.

Tudo o que o Brasil não precisa neste momento em que está no fundo do poço(segundo Paulo Guedes) é um conflito que sacuda a economia global.

Logo, entender o Irã é uma questão vital. Em primeiro lugar, cabe separar as perspectivas de EUA e Israel nessa questão. Para Israel, trata-se, sim, de uma ameaça existencial. O Irã dos aiatolás já fez incontáveis declarações de que gostaria de tirar do mapa o Estado judeu. Portanto, Israel tem mesmo que tomar todas as cautelas.

Já para os Estados Unidos, o Irã só é um problema no Iraque, mesmo assim porque a derrubada do governo de maioria sunita (de Saddam Hussein) levou a um país dominado pelos xiitas e, como tal, inevitavelmente sujeito à influência iraniana. É o que analisam, para Foreign Affairs, Steven Simon (Amherst College) e Jonathan Stevenson (Instituto Internacional de Estudos Estratégicos).

Mais: há aparente contradição entre o presidente Donald Trump, em tese pró-negociações desde que levem a um acordo talhado para os interesses de Washington, e seus assessores belicosos, Mike Pompeo e John Bolton.

Sanam Vakil, pesquisador da Chatham House, excelente centro britânico, procurou 75 analistas e formuladores de políticas de dez países (incluídos Irã e Estados Unidos), em busca de entender o quadro do contencioso.

Relatou também para Foreign Affairs que "alguns entrevistados, incluindo americanos, expressaram preocupação com a possibilidade de que Bolton e Pompeo minem o sucesso de qualquer discussão com o Irã".

Sugestão para o Itamaraty, se está interessado em algo mais do que as idiotices de Olavo de Carvalho: recuperar essa consulta da Chatham House. Fornecerá subsídios excelentes para entender o Irã.

Não é nada simples: se há divergências na administração americana, existem também no Irã, entre o moderado presidente Hassan Rouhani e a linha dura, conforme expôs para o israelense Haaretz Ariane Tabatabai, especialista no país persa.

Resumo da ópera: o Brasil deve, sim, atender ao pedido de Israel, mas não para participar do cerco ao Irã e, menos ainda, para estimular um conflito. Estudar o Irã é a melhor maneira —talvez a única— de distender uma situação com tanto potencial desestabilizador.

Aventureirismo de Trump e de Bolton se volta agora contra o Iran - USA Today

President Donald Trump hopes to 'sit down' with Iran over nuclear deal

Kim Hjelmgaard and Deirdre Shesgreen, USA TODAY, May 14, 2019

National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that the U.S. is sending the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Middle East.

Speaking during a campaign rally in Florida, President Donald Trump raised the prospect of holding talks with Iran over the nuclear deal he withdrew the U.S. from.

"I hope to be able at some point, maybe it won't happen, possibly won't, to sit down and work out a fair deal, we're not looking to hurt anybody ... we just don't want (Iran) to have nuclear weapons," Trump said Wednesday in Panama City Beach.

Trump's remarks followed an announcement Wednesday from Iran's President Hassan Rouhani announced that the Middle East nation would stop complying with two provisions in the nuclear accord it signed with world powers. 

Rouhani said Iran would reduce its compliance with the 2015 deal in response to new restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, part of a broader U.S. campaign to ratchet up economic and military pressure on Tehran.

Iran's declaration came on the one-year anniversary of Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the agreement that limited Iran's nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. 

Trump walked away from the deal he has described as the "worst ever negotiated" because he does not believe it does enough to limit Iran's nuclear ambitions or its ballistic missile programs and support for terrorism. 

In his announcement, Rouhani said Iran will keep excess low-enriched uranium and "heavy water" from its nuclear program inside the country – as opposed to selling it internationally – in a move that effectively amounts to a partial breach of the deal.

The Trump administration said last week it would sanction any country or business that purchased those products from Iran.

Rouhani set a 60-day deadline for new terms to the nuclear accord, absent negotiations with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union. He said that if those terms aren't met, Iran will resume higher uranium enrichment, the process that creates nuclear fuel. 

War drums: Pentagon adds B-52s to aircraft carrier rushing to Middle East 

"We felt that the nuclear deal needs a surgery, and the painkiller pills of the last year have been ineffective," Rouhani said in a nationally televised address. "This surgery is for saving the deal, not destroying it."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was in Moscow, tweeted, "After a year of patience, Iran stops measures that U.S. has made impossible to continue." Zarif warned that world powers have "a narrowing window to reverse this."

American officials on Wednesday slapped yet more economic penalties on Iran. The White House announced sanctions aimed at blocking Iran from exporting iron, steel, aluminum and copper, which it said were the regime’s largest non-petroleum-related sources of export revenue.  

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visits the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran, on Jan. 13, 2015. (Photo: EPA-EFE)

Brian Hook, the State Department's special representative for Iran and senior policy adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said Iran intends to expand its nuclear weapons program. "That is in defiance of international norms and yet another attempt by the regime at nuclear blackmail," he said. 

Experts said Iran's move is a relatively soft counterpunch to the Trump administration's intense campaign to isolate the regime politically and economically. Some suggested the Trump administration's policies seem designed to achieve this exact escalation.

"This was pretty predictable," said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the Crisis Group, a nonpartisan group focused on preventing conflict.

“The U.S. has tried to bring Iran to its knees with its maximum pressure campaign in a minimum amount of time, and for about a year, the Iranians demonstrated restraint and remained committed to their obligations under the nuclear deal," he said. 

"But they have increasingly less to lose because the U.S. sanctions have effectively deprived them of all the benefits that the nuclear deal promised," Vaez said. 

Vaez said Iran's response was "cleverly devised" to shift the blame to the Trump administration "because the U.S. last week basically rendered it illegal or a sanctionable act for any country to buy the excess ... heavy water and low-enriched uranium."

Others echoed that assessment and said Iran’s announcement did not necessarily signal a desire by the regime to become a nuclear-armed nation. 

"I think we should be very careful about assuming that Iran stepping away from the JCPOA means stepping closer to the bomb," said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, a dual American Iranian national who runs a news and research agency focused on Iran’s economy. He noted that Iran is still a party to an international nuclear nonproliferation treaty and has not seriously pursued a nuclear weapons program for over a decade.

"So far, Iran remains committed to the deal, and we should not trap ourselves in a deal/bomb binary," said London-based Batmanghelidj. 

The Pentagon redirected aircraft bombers and a carrier strike group to the Middle East, citing intercepted intelligence indicating that Iran or its proxies in the region might be preparing attacks on American military troops and facilities. 

Last month, Trump designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, an elite wing of the nation's military that also plays a large economic role, a terrorist organization.

The economic sanctions the White House has imposed since withdrawing from the nuclear deal officially target Iran's government and industries but they have also hindered Iranians' access to essential medicines and consumer products.

Exclusive:Iran open to talks with US if Trump changes approach to nuclear deal

Pompeo took an unscheduled trip to Iraq on Tuesday where he met with Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi and briefed Iraqi officials on the "increased threat stream that we had seen" from Iranian forces.

"We talked to them about the importance of Iraq ensuring that it’s able to adequately protect Americans in their country," Pompeo said.

"I think everyone will look at the Iranian decision and have to make their own assessment about how much increased risk there is," he said. 

There are about 5,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq. 

Inside Iran: America's contentious history in Iran leads to anger and weariness

America's top diplomat gave an address Wednesday in London where the topic of rising tensions between the United States and Iran came up again.

"They take hostages and repress their own people. I urge the U.K. to stand with us to rein in the regime’s bloodletting and lawlessness, not soothe the Ayatollahs angry at our decision to pull out of the nuclear deal," Pompeo said in Britain's capital. 

President Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated the nuclear deal, sought to block Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons through diplomacy. The Trump administration, by contrast, has not been shy in its preference for a campaign of "maximum pressure" on Iran and has cut off all contact with the regime.

Vaez said Iran's announcement was a measured response and designed "mostly to serve as leverage in order to compel the remaining parties in the deal to throw Iran an economic lifeline in the face of U.S. sanctions." 

European signatories to the nuclear accord have attempted to stay in the nuclear agreement by establishing a financial mechanism, known as INSTEX, intended to help them circumvent U.S. sanctions, but it has not been fully implemented.

Animosity between the United States and Iran stretches back decades to when the CIA helped install a dictator as Iran's leader in 1953. A hostage crisis in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran coincided with the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton say confronting Iran is key to achieving peace and security in the Middle East, and both men are among Iran's fiercest critics in Washington. Bolton was instrumental in advocating for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

President Hassan Rouhani says Iran will no longer comply with parts of an international nuclear agreement. (Photo: EPA-EFE)

They provided few details about the nature of the threat that led to the sending of a carrier strike group and bomber task force to the Persian Gulf. Iran-backed militias killed 608 U.S. soldiers in Iraq from 2003-2011, according to the Pentagon. Tehran is regularly accused of being the largest state sponsor of terrorism, but the United Nations' nuclear watchdog has repeatedly verified that the regime has adhered to the 2015 nuclear pact – even after the U.S. departure last May. 

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"The (nuclear deal) is doing what it was designed to do: preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. As such, the deal is too important to be allowed to die," the directors of 18 foreign affairs think tanks and research institutes wrote in a joint letter published Wednesday as Iran signaled that the accord could totally unravel. 

"I’m deeply worried that the Trump administration is leading us toward an unnecessary war with Iran," said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in a statement late Tuesday. "Let me make one thing clear: The Trump administration has no legal authority to start a war against Iran without the consent of Congress."

Batmanghelidj said, "Iranians perceive something deeply vindictive about the way the Trump administration is treating their country."

That doesn't mean that people are growing more supportive of the Islamic Republic.

"It is possible to be dismayed with both the U.S. government and their own government," he said.

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Contributing: Tom Vanden Brook