By Jubin Katiraie
The new US defence secretary said Wednesday that the military intends to protect US commercial ships against Iranian threats in the Persian Gulf, but cannot provide naval escorts in every case.
Mark Esper, who previously served as the Army’s top civilian official, said: “We will escort our ships to the degree that the risk demands it… To the degree United States vessels need an escort, we will be there, we will be available to them.
By Pooya Stone
The Washington Times on Thursday published a special report about the Free Iran gathering that took place earlier this month in Ashraf 3 – the home to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK) in Albania.
The special report named “Iran: The Power of the Alternative,” which was published in print on July 25, 2019, can be viewed online.
By Jubin Katiraie
The US Navy warship that reported bringing down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz last week may have actually brought down two drones.
One US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the military did not have definite confirmation, but there “might have been a second” drone brought down.
By Pooya Stone
Saudi Arabia urged the international community on Tuesday to do whatever is necessary to stop Iran’s violations of maritime navigation laws.
In a meeting chaired by King Salman bin Abdulaziz, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, the Saudi cabinet said that Iran’s interception of commercial vessels in Gulf waters, including most recently the seizure of a British tanker, violated international law and must be stopped.
By Jubin Katiraie
Two women were hanged at dawn on Tuesday in Iran, according to an informed source, bringing the total number of women executed under the supposed moderate President Hassan Rouhani to at least 93 since he took office in 2013.
The two women who were hanged at the Central Prison of Urmia on July 23 have been identified as Arasteh Ranjbar and Nazdar Vatankhah.
By Pooya Stone
Supporters of the Iranian Resistance in the UK are holding a major rally this Saturday in London to show their support for the ongoing popular anti-regime uprising in Iran.
The Anglo-Iranian Communities and their supporters will call on the British Government to end the fatal policy of appeasement towards the ‘Iranian regime’. They will also urge Members of Parliament to adopt a firm policy that punishes the ‘mullahs’ for their ‘brutal crimes’ and recognises the right of the Iranian people to overthrow the regime and bring freedom and democracy to their country.
By Jubin Katiraie
Some 1.3 billion dollars allocated to importing medical instrumentation has “disappeared” in Iran’s Ministry of Hygiene.
“$1.3 billion allotted to buy medical instrumentation has disappeared, and it is not clear who has taken the sum and what has been bought,” affirmed Said Namaki, the Minister of Hygiene, according to the governmental website Fararoo.
London, 23 Jul – As military tensions between Iran and the West rose on Monday, Washington and Tehran increased the rhetoric between them.
Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he was ready for “the absolute worst” from Iran, which is “the number one state of terror in the world”, and said that the mullahs’ continued malign actions were making it more difficult for him to negotiate with them.
This announcement came just hours after Iran’s ministry of intelligence claimed that it had arrested 17 US spies, who were working at Iran’s military and nuclear facilities, and sentenced some of them to death.
An Iranian official said that the supposed agents had “confessed” in prison that CIA agents gave them “tempting promises, including immigration to the United States, a decent job and money”. It is worth remembering that Iran usually uses coercion including physical and mental torture to draw false “confessions” from detainees.
However, both Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected Iran’s claims.
Trump tweeted: “The Report of Iran capturing CIA spies is totally false. Zero truth. Just more lies and propaganda (like their shot down drone) put out by a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do. Their Economy is dead and will get much worse. Iran is a total mess!”
While Pompeo told Fox News: “The Iranian regime has a long history of lying… I would take with a significant grain of salt any Iranian assertion about actions that they’ve taken.”
Of course, this is far from the first time Iran has claimed to arrest American spies. In April, Iran’s Mehr news agency said Tehran had uncovered a US spy network with hundreds of agents. While a US official disputed similar claims by Iran in June.
This latest incident comes as Iran has become increasingly aggressive in the Strait of Hormuz, by seizing a British-flagged oil tanker on Friday.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt labelled this an “act of state piracy” on Monday and said the UK is trying to create a European-led naval mission to protect ships in the region. The US has proposed leading a similar naval coalition recently.
James Carafano, a national security analyst at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said that it’s difficult to protect all merchant vessels in the strait, so more nations should come together in “an international commitment to freedom of navigation”.
Iran has also in recent weeks shot down a US surveillance drone in the area and threatened the USS Boxer with an Iranian drone.
By Pooya Stone
A British charity worker falsely imprisoned in Iran has been returned to prison on Saturday after spending nearly a week on the mental ward of a public hospital, according to her husband.
Richard Ratcliffe said Monday that his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe reported to him that she was “broken” after spending six days chained and under heavy guard in a psychiatric institution.
By Jubin Katiraie
The UK called for the establishment of a European-led naval mission to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker on Friday in what Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt described as an act of “state piracy”.
Hunt outlined these plans to parliament after a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, COBRA, which discussed the response to the capture of the ship in Omani territorial waters.
