By Jubin Katiraie

Kuwait officials have voiced their “concern” over Iran’s threat to close down the Strait of Hormuz, the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean, in response to US sanctions, because Kuwait is one of the countries that will be adversely affected if Iran follows through.

Kuwait’s deputy foreign minister Mr Jarallah told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on Sunday: “We are looking at these threats with concern, and hoping as always to distance our region from this tension.”

By Pooya Stone

United States Central Command Chief General Kenneth McKenzie said on Saturday the United States would deploy the necessary resources to counter any dangerous actions by Iran, Sky News Arabia reported.

“We’re going to continue to reach out to our partners and friends in the region to ensure that we make common cause against the threat of Iran,” McKenzie, on an official visit to the Gulf region, was quoted as saying by Sky News Arabia.

By Mehdi

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has dismissed the suggestion of a prisoner swap for a British-Iranian mother being held in Tehran as a “vile” diplomatic ploy, while her husband told AFP the idea was “almost impossible”.

In New York, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday suggested a swap between Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is in jail in Tehran for alleged sedition, and Negar Ghodskani, an Iranian woman held in Australia on a US extradition warrant.

By Mehdi

The US designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist group has significantly affected the fate of financial reform bills that the West demanded, according to the Secretary-General of the influential Expediency Discernment Council (EDC) in Iran.

Major General Mohsen Rezaei said on Wednesday, that the IRGC designation was a “well calculated and premeditated” American plan.