January 14, 2016
By the Data Team
Sometime (click here) in the next few days Iran’s “Implementation Day” is almost certain to be declared. That is the moment when Iran is deemed to have complied with all its obligations in dismantling those parts of its nuclear programme that would soon have put it weeks away from being able to build a bomb. All nuclear-related sanctions, including the freezing of $100bn of Iranian assets, will be lifted. At the same time, Iran will apply the Additional Protocol of its safeguards agreement (subject to ratification by its parliament, the Majlis) with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a measure which gives the agency’s inspectors access to materials and sites beyond declared nuclear facilities....
January 13, 2016
By Taro Copp
...The crews (click here) of the two U.S. riverine command boats – small shallow-water patrol craft with minimal technology or defenses on board – were detained Tuesday after a mechanical failure caused the boats to drift into Iran’s territorial waters near Farsi Island, U.S. defense officials said. There were nine male sailors and one female sailor on board the vessels.
What could have become a tense international incident instead was quickly resolved through U.S. and Iranian diplomacy, a sign of what’s at stake in the Persian Gulf, said retired Navy Cmdr. Chris Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Institute for the Study of War....
...“I think the real interesting question here is, ‘What is the internal state of play in terms of the hardliners in Iran versus the moderates? I thought there was a real possibility Iran would hold the sailors longer, but it seems the senior Iranian leadership told the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] who had the U.S. sailors, ‘You are going to release these guys right now.’”...
