IRAN IN COMPLIANCE WITH N-PACT … HIT ON CHEMICALS

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Tehran: US bases, carriers in rang  – US says Iran seeks nerve agents for offensive purposes

LONDON, Nov 22, (Agencies): An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Wednesday that US bases in Afghanistan, the UAE and Qatar, and US aircraft carriers in the Gulf were within range of Iranian missiles, as tensions rise between Tehran and Washington. “They are within our reach and we can hit them if they (Americans) make a move,” Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ airspace division, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Hajizadeh said the Guards had improved the precision of their missiles, and specifically said they could hit the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra base in the United Arab Emirates and Kandahar base in Afghanistan that host US forces. US President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme in May and reimposed sanctions on Tehran. He said the deal was flawed because it did not include curbs on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles or its support for proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.

The Islamic Republic’s government has ruled out negotiations with Washington over its military capabilities, particularly its missile programme run by the Guards. Iran, which says its missile programme is purely defensive, has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if the United States tries to strangle Iranian oil exports.

In October, the Revolutionary Guards fired missiles at Islamic State militants in Syria after the Islamist group took responsibility for an attack at a military parade in Iran that killed 25 people, nearly half of them members of the Guards. The United States accused Iran on Thursday of failing to declare a toxic arms programme to the global chemical warfare watchdog, in breach of international agreements. US envoy Kenneth Ward told the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague that Tehran was also seeking deadly nerve agents for “offensive purposes”.

Tehran did not immediately respond to the accusations, which add to tensions with Washington over Iran’s nuclear programme, terrorism, and the war in Syria. “The United States has had longstanding concerns that Iran maintains a chemical weapons programme that it failed to declare to the OPCW,” ambassador Ward told a five-yearly meeting on the body’s future. “The US is also concerned that Iran is pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes.”

Appeal
Ward said Iran had failed to declare the transfer of chemical- filled shells sent to Libya in the 1980s despite an appeal by the OPCW to identify their origin. They were found after the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafiin 2011. “They were clearly of Iranian origin as evidenced by the farsi writing on the boxes containing the artillery shells,” he said.

Iran had also failed to declare a “chemical weapons filling capability” despite the discovery of toxic shells and bombs in Libya and also in Iraq. Finally, Iran had failed to declare riot control agents despite having marketed them at defence expos, he added.

The new chemical warfare allegations come amid growing pressure on Iran from President Trump, who has withdrawn from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and introduced several rounds of unilateral US sanctions. Ward accused Iran and its ally Russia of “enabling” the use of chemical weapons by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “while pursuing their own chemical weapons programmes”.

Western powers have accused Russia of carrying out an attack using an undeclared Soviet- era nerve agent on former double agent Sergei Skripal in the British town of Salisbury in March. Member states at the OPCW this week rejected attempts by Russia to block the watchdog’s new powers to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria and elsewhere.

Previously the OPCW – charged with enforcing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention under which all toxic arms will be destroyed – was only able to confirm the use of chemical weapons without assigning blame. Meanwhile, Iran is implementing its side of its nuclear deal with major powers, the UN atomic watchdog policing the pact reaffirmed on Thursday, two weeks after the latest wave of reimposed US sanctions against Tehran took effect.

President Trump said in May he was pulling the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal for reasons including Iran’s influence on the wars in Syria and Yemen and its ballistic missile programme, none of which are covered by the pact.

Germany, France and Britain have been scrambling to prevent a collapse of the deal, under which international sanctions against Tehran were lifted in exchange for strict limits being placed on Iran’s nuclear activities. Many Western companies have cancelled plans to do business with Iran for fear of breaching the sanctions Washington has put back in place.

That has raised fears that Iran will breach the deal’s nuclear limits, which are designed to keep it a year away from being able to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to. “Iran is implementing its nuclearrelated commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Yukiya Amano told a quarterly meeting of his agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors. The JCPOA is the official name of the nuclear accord. “It is essential that Iran continues to fully implement those commitments,” he added, confirming the findings of a confidential report to IAEA member states last week.

Amano did not comment on the broader impact of US sanctions, the latest round of which took effect on Nov 5. Iran has warned it could scrap the deal if signatories France, Britain and Germany and their allies fail to preserve the economic benefits promised by its terms.

The European powers have been working on setting up a so-called special- purpose vehicle that would act as a kind of clearing house matching Iranian exports with EU exports in what amounts to a barter arrangement to circumvent US sanctions. But the countries they have approached to host it have declined, diplomats say, delaying the project and deepening doubt as to whether Europeans can counteract the bulk of US sanctions targeting oil and other vital sources of income.

In other news, five Iranian security personnel, who had been held by jihadists for a month, have been fl own home after Pakistani forces secured their release, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Thursday.

The five were part of a mixed unit of 12 border guards, militiamen and Guards intelligence agents who were captured by jihadists of the Pakistanbased Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) group during an operation near the border on Oct 16, a state television-run news agency reported.

The Pakistani foreign ministry announced on Nov 15 that police and troops had secured the release of five of the captives and were still trying to free the others. “Following efforts and interactions with the Pakistani side to free the border guards and militiamen,” five of them “were released and returned to Iran last night”, the Guards said. The Guards website carried photographs of the five being welcomed home by generals as they got off the plane. Sistan-Baluchistan province, where the men were captured, has long been a fl ashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and jihadists carrying out cross-border raids.

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