By Jubin Katiraie
The US sanctions on Iranian oil exports have forced a major purchaser of Iranian crude to buy their oil from Saudi Arabia and the US instead.
Sanjiv Singh, head of the state-run refiner Indian Oil Corporation, said that it was a “collective decision” to end imports from Iran, made with input from the government to ensure the best interests of India. He said India will likely become more even reliant on other countries for its energy needs.
By Pooya Stone
The Iranian government is systematically violating the international bans on torture and other ill-treatment with its targeting of the families of the victims of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners, said Amnesty International on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
Thirty-one years after Iranian authorities secretly forcibly disappeared and executed 30,000 political dissidents, dumping their bodies in unmarked mass graves, the authorities are continuing to torment relatives by not revealing when, how, or why their loved ones were killed and where their remains are buried. The relatives who have fought to find the truth have only been subjected to threats, harassment, intimidation and attacks.
By Jubin Katiraie
US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that although he wished to avoid war with Iran, any military confrontation between the two countries would be swift with Iran the obvious loser.
Trump said: “I hope we don’t [go to war], but we’re in a very strong position if something should happen. I’m not talking boots on the ground … I’m just saying if something would happen, it wouldn’t last very long.”
By Pooya Stone
The United States has called on the UN Security Council to take a series of measures to ensure that its sanctions blacklist is enforced as thoroughly and as tightly as possible.
In the letter to the UN Security Council, the United States pointed out that the sanctions blacklist had not been updated for quite some time, meaning that the effect is not as enforced as it could, or should, be. For more than nine years, aliases and other such relevant information have not been included on the list that is distributed to all UN member states.
By Jubin Katiraie
Iranian security forces have detained three citizens in Oshnavieh, west of Iran, and transferred them to an unknown location.
The detainees are Issa Rashozdeh from Dasht-e Bill city, and Himan Bayazidi and Rahim Ashadi from Oshnavieh.
By Pooya Stone
On Tuesday, June 25, Iran’s police arrested an Iranian citizen, who immolated himself at the entrance of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.
According to the ICT Ministry, the victim was identified as a private contractor in a branch of the ministry, and he committed self-immolation for not receiving his demands after entering the main door of the ministry’s headquarters.
By Jubin Katiraie
At the beginning of the week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to social media to criticise the United States. In a message on Twitter, the Iranian Foreign Minister said that it is in the United States’ interests, and those of the rest of the world, to remove its forces from the Persian Gulf. He added: “But it’s now clear that the #B Team is not concerned with US interests—they despise diplomacy, and thirst for war.”
By Pooya Stone
One state-run newspaper in Iran is reporting that 30% of Iranians live in “squalid” rented homes, while 2.5 million homes are left empty.
Vatan-e Emrooz wrote that 26.6 million Iranians live in these awful conditions, but the situation will not improve because there is no competition in the market as the owner of the uninhabited houses either refuse to rent their homes or will only rent them at an outrageous price that almost no one can afford.
London, 27 June – Iran is planning to strike Western targets via terror cells that it is setting up in Africa, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reports. The network of cells has been ordered by the head of the extra territorial Quds Force, a branch of the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The head, Qassem Suleimani, is responsible for a number of unconventional warfare activities that are carried out outside Iran. He also oversees a number of intelligence activities across the world.
By Jubin Katiraie
The Trump administration is working to persuade allies that the ongoing tensions in the Middle East are a global challenge that requires global diplomacy, according to the new acting US defence chief Mark Esper on Tuesday, and “not [just] Iran versus the United States”.
Esper, who is meeting with NATO defence ministers in Brussels, told reporters that he wants to help create a broader coalition to deter Iran’s malign behaviour and compel Iranian officials to come back to the negotiating table for a new nuclear deal.
