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TEHRAN Wary of U.S. President Donald Trump's tough talk on Iran, the European Union is courting Tehran to show Iranians preparing to vote in a May 19 presidential poll that it is committed to a nuclear deal and they stand to benefit, EU diplomats say.

Europe's energy commissioner is leading more than 50 European firms in a business forum in Tehran over the weekend - the latest bid to foster new ties in the 16 months since Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Of the six major powers who engineered the deal - the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia - EU nations bore the brunt of the oil embargo on Iran and stand to gain the most from a thaw they view as a victory for European diplomacy.

Meeting with Iran's atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi, Commissioner Miguel Arias-Canete echoed the EU's mantra that it is "fully committed" to the 2015 deal and expects the same from all other parties.

But the bloc's leverage remains limited - particularly if it is not able to shield European firms from the risk of remaining U.S. sanctions and encourage big banks to reverse over a decade of Iran's exclusion from the international financial system.

The latter was a theme of another big conference in Tehran on Saturday attended by Germany and Iran's central banks.

Some Western companies have returned - planemakers Airbus and Boeing and carmakers PeugeotCitroen and Renault - but many more have hung back, fearing Trump will tighten the screws on an already complex set of rules for engaging with Iran.

The pace and scale of Western investment is at the heart of a challenge by hardline rivals of pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani, who is seeking re-election in May.

Iran's ultimate authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his loyalists have criticized Rouhani's policy of rapprochement with the West, arguing the 2015 nuclear accord had not yielded the benefits he promised.

"He needs more time... He has to be given a chance," Iran's vice president, Masoumeh Ebtekar, told Reuters in an interview.

"There is a lot of enthusiasm about working with Iran now and ... I hope that the American administration wakes up to these realities," she added.

The Trump administration said on April 18 it was launching an inter-agency review of whether the lifting of sanctions against Iran was in the United States' national security interests, while acknowledging that Tehran was complying with the deal to rein in its nuclear program.

CONFRONTATION RISK

EU diplomats voiced concern that a more confrontational stance by the Trump administration could empower Iran's hardliners ahead of the elections - although there is no sign the United States intends to walk away from the deal.

EU diplomats say they share U.S. concerns over Iran's human rights record, its ballistic missiles tests, its funding of blacklisted militant groups and its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"We disagree that we have to address these issues by ditching the (nuclear) deal," one EU diplomat told Reuters. "This will only empower those (in Iran) with a more confrontational stance - bring out the worst in the system."

For now, Iranian leaders have kept their cool, with Salehi saying Iran will only take "reciprocal action" if the U.S. is found in breach of the deal - leaving EU diplomats caught in a balancing act between the two long-time rivals.

In recent months, European leaders have been frequent visitors to Tehran with businessmen in tow - in an effort to keep alive the 2015 accord, which also has the support of Russia and China, rivals for influence in the Islamic Republic.

The bloc's trade with Iran has partially recovered - much of that due to oil exports from Iran in what one EU official called "a direct incentive to stick to the deal".

The International Monetary Fund this year applauded Iran's "impressive recovery", with growth expected over 6 percent for the last 12 months and low inflation - a record that Rouhani has been keen to defend.

But the hoped-for a boom since the EU and United Nations sanctions over Iran's nuclear program were lifted a year ago has been hampered by separate U.S. measures in place over Iran's missile program.

"The Europeans want to at least create the optical impression they are politically invested in this deal working," said Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations. "Even if from a commercial perspective, companies are essentially on hold."

The risk of falling afoul of U.S. measures has been enough to persuade major Western banks to stay away from Iran, andTehran accuses Washington of undermining the nuclear deal by scaring investors away from Iran.

While acknowledging domestic criticism, Salehi told reporters Tehran will remain committed to the deal regardless of the outcome of next month's vote.

There are also signs that the EU's firm stance has given U.S. officials pause, with senators saying they delayed a bill to slap new sanctions on Iran due to worries over how the bloc would react and the Iranian presidential elections.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

WASHINGTON The White House on Sunday defended President Donald Trump's decision to invite Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to Washington, saying his cooperation was needed to counter North Korea, even as the administration faced human rights criticism for its overture to Manila.

BAGHDAD An Iraqi commander expects to dislodge Islamic State from Mosul in May despite resistance from militants in the densely populated Old City district.

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Wary of Trump, EU courts Iran to boost moderates before polls - Reuters

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY President Mahmoud Abbas doesnt like the Balfour Declaration and keeps demanding an apology for it.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Nabil Abu Rudeinah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbass spokesman, on Sunday slammed a senior Iranian official for making disparaging comments of the Palestinian Authority leader.

The statement and attack of Hussein Sheikh al-Islam, an adviser to the Iranian foreign minister, on the Palestinian president and the Palestinian struggle is unacceptable and irresponsible, Abu Rudeinah told Wafa, the official PA news site. It is not acceptable for a state that has contributed to the division [between the West Bank and Gaza] to talk about Palestine and its people.

Iran is a sponsor of Hamas, which dominates Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Sheikh al-Islam told the Hamas-affiliated al-Risalah website earlier Sunday that what [the] PA and Mahmoud Abbas are perpetrating at the expense of the Palestinian people in Gaza is a crime.

Sheikh al-Islams comments came three days after Abbas informed Israel that the PA is stopping its payments for electricity in Gaza.

Abbas is reportedly considering withdrawing parts of other budgets that the PA allocates to Gaza.

The adviser to the Iranian Foreign Ministry also said that the PA is carrying out a proxy war against Gaza.

The PA and Iran have largely maintained cold ties, but the two sides seldom criticize each other in the media.

Abu Rudeinah added that Iran, which is stoking civil wars in the Arab world, should not interfere in internal Palestinian affairs.

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EU Bolsters Support for Iran Nuclear Accord Wall Street Journal (subscription) TEHRANThe European Union rallied behind Iran's nuclear deal during a high-level visit to the country over the weekend, vowing to safeguard the accord despite U.S. threats to scrap it and pledging to support the Islamic Republic's economy. With less ...

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An award-winning Iranian filmmaker imprisoned over his work has been released after serving about five months of his year-long sentence, though he doesn't know whether he'll make movies again in the Islamic Republic.

Keywan Karimi told The Associated Press on Sunday that he credited international pressure for his early release, as well as escaping the 223 lashes that were part of his sentence.

Others, however, remain imprisoned in the Islamic Republic as part of a hard-line crackdown amid President Hassan Rouhani's outreach to the wider world through the nuclear deal.

Karimi said in an interview over Skype that he served his sentence in Tehran's Evin prison, which holds political prisoners and dual nationals detained by the security services. He described spending his first month in solitary confinement, a place he described as "very dirty, very cold."

He said he suffered pain in his stomach and leg, but ultimately recovered. He later was put into the general prison population, sharing a room with 20 other prisoners.

"You're far away from freedom, far away from something you love," Karimi said.

Karimi was convicted of "insulting sanctities" in Iran, whose government is ultimately overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The case involved footage from both a "video clip" and a film he directed called Writing on the City,which focuses on political graffiti in Iran from its 1979 Islamic Revolution to its contested 2009 election.

Karimi is perhaps best known by international film critics for his 2013 black-and-white minimalist film, The Adventure of the Married Couple.

The short film, based on a story by Italian writer Italo Calvino, follows the grinding routine of a husband and wife working opposite shifts, she in a bottle factory and he at a mannequin store. Neither speaks, the only noise is the hum of the city they live in.

The film played in some 40 film festivals and won prizes in Spain and Colombia.

Karimi is one of several artists, poets, journalists, models and activists arrested in a crackdown on expression led by hard-liners who oppose Rouhani.

His release comes ahead of Iran's May presidential election, in which Rouhani is seeking re-election. For now, Karimi said he was grateful to be out of prison, though he felt alienated from Iran and its people

"I want to continue filmmaking, but I don't know how and in which country," Karimi said.

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Iranian filmmaker jailed for his work released early - CBC.ca

The conversation in Washington about the nuclear deal with Iran has been on tactical issues like how many months it might take for Iran to breakout from constraints of the agreementlength of time Tehran would need to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make one nuclear weapon. To extend breakout time, the accord requires a restriction on uranium enrichment at two key sites, Fordow and Natanz, and that the core of a heavy-water reactor in Arak be rendered inoperable. Without doing so, a plutonium byproduct might have been reprocessed into weapons-grade material, which would be another route for Iran to acquire the Bomb.

Nuclear weaponization is the conduct of experimentation on large-scale high explosives. To create a nuclear weapon, it is necessary to have fuel (enriched uranium or plutonium), an explosive device (trigger mechanism), and a delivery system, (e.g., a missile). Having ceded to Iran the right to enrich on its own soil and permitted it to develop an advanced enrichment capability, preventing weaponization is the final barrier against a nuclear-capable Iran.

At the conference, the NCRI showed maps, graphs, and charts of the covert organization as well as names of individuals involved in the weaponization program. At the new site, given by Tehran an innocent-sounding name, Research Academy, the regime has used a military facility in Parchin to hide its activities and test high explosives.

The engineering unit that is charged and tasked with actually building the bomb in a secret way for the Iranian regime is called the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of NCRIs Washington office, using a power point presentation.

A spokesman for the White House National Security Council said that his colleagues are carefully evaluating the NCRI package.

The NCRI called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect Tehrans nuclear sites. It also demanded the international community halt Irans enrichment program and dismantle all covert sites involved in nuclear weapons research and development.

Attending that news conference and being a close follower of nuclear revelations by Iranian dissidents, I can attest the information presented appeared to be valid.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said structures visible in the satellite photography are consistent with a facility that makes high explosives. The international inspectors should use authorities under the nuclear deal to go and look at this site, Albright said. Olli Heinonen, former deputy director-general of the IAEA, said, This is a typical design for a site that works with high explosives. ... Most likely IAEA should have access to this site.

Jafarzadeh said, This is the site that has been kept secret. There is secret research to manufacture the bomb and basically cover up the real activities of the Iranian regime.

The allegations of the NCRI drew upon its extensive network in Iran to obtain information it presented on April 21st. The intelligence demonstrated there is a secret nerve center of the Iranian regimes nuclear weapons project. It is responsible for designing the bomb, and this center has been continuing its work, even after the 2015 nuclear deal.

Irans weaponization program must be totally dismantled; there needs to be airtight control over all aspects of Tehrans nuclear program and permanent, unhindered and immediate access to all sites and access to and interviews with key nuclear experts; and all outstanding questions regarding possible military dimensions of Irans nuclear program need to be followed up to expose the full scope of the nuclear weapons program. The Trump administration should emphasize these three steps. It would move the conversation to a strategic level, where it is most likely to deter the Iranian regime from cheating on its international obligations and prevent it from obtaining the bomb.

Dr. Raymond Tanter (@Americanchr)served on the senior staff of the Reagan National Security Council from 1981-82. He is now professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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