Iran Focus
London, 23 Nov – The US has accused Iran of violating its commitments to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by failing to declare chemical weapons-related activities.
US envoy Kenneth Ward told an annual meeting of the intergovernmental organization in The Hague on Thursday that the US is concerned that Iran is creating “central nervous system-acting chemicals” for offensive military use.
Iran Focus
London, 23 Nov – According to an article in the Iran Human Rights Monitor, the earthquake that shook Iran’s western provinces, damaging 10 cities and 1,930 villages, destroying more than 100,000 housing units, killing more than 600 and injuring thousands more, is more than a year past, and conditions are becoming even more difficult for the homeless survivors, as the authorities continue to fail to providing aide.
Worst hit was the cities of Qasr-e Shirin, Sarpol-e Zahab and Salas-e Babajani. According to the local governor, in Kermanshah’s Dalahu county some villages had been completely destroyed.
Iran Focus
London, 22 Nov – Iran is trying to violate the terms of the ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas in order to reignite a war in the Gaza strip, according to Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
Speaking on Wednesday at the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in Jerusalem, he said: “There are forces out there that want to push us all into the abyss of a confrontation.”
Iran Focus
London, 22 Nov – Two Christian converts in Iran, who were planning to meet in a northern city of the Shiite-run country, were detained on Friday, November 16, in what some human rights activists are calling a rash of arrests in the area.
Behnam Ersali and Davood Rasooli, both converts from Islam who live in Karaj, had arranged to meet in Mashhad, according to advocacy organization Middle East Concern (MEC), but their calls are believed to have been intercepted by the Iranian intelligence.
Iran Focus
London, 22 Nov – The US has taken steps to disrupt an Iranian-Russian network that smuggled millions of barrels of oil to Syria with the hundreds of millions of dollars in profits being used to indirectly fund militant groups, like Hamas and Hezbollah.
In a statement on Tuesday, the US Treasury explained that the complicated arrangement between the rogue states involved a Syrian citizen using his Russia-based company to ship Iranian oil to Syria with the aid of a Russian state-owned company, violating US sanctions on Iran and Syria. After that, Syria helped to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Iran-backed militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas; both of which are on the US terrorism blacklist.
Iran Focus
London, 21 Nov – According to Reuters, on Monday European diplomats agreed to consider targeted sanctions on Iranians after representatives from France and Denmark traveled to Brussels this week to brief foreign ministers on foiled attacks by the hardline regime in France and Denmark. This meeting could set the course for a more unified West-ern policy toward Tehran’s non-nuclear threats, according to a regional expert.
Iran Focus
London, 21 Nov – Toby Dershowitz, the Senior Vice President for Government Relations and Strategy, and Serena Frechter, Government Relations Analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), asserted in a report published Monday that the ongoing trial in Paris of fifteen defendants who are linked to Hezbollah is a sign that Europe needs to “cease minimizing the threat” from the Iran-backed terror group.
Iran Focus
London, 21 Nov – The US has placed sanctions on six people and three entities involved in smuggling Iranian oil shipments to Syria to evade US sanctions, according to the Treasury Department on Tuesday.
The individuals listed include two Iranian nationals, a Russian, a Syrian, an Iraqi and a Lebanese person, while two of the entities are based in Russia and one in Iran.
US officials reported that Iranian officials had been working with Russian companies to ship “millions of barrels of oil to Syria”, something that violates recently imposed US sanctions on Iran and benefits the Bashar al-Assad Government in Syria.
Iran Focus
London, 21 Nov – A senior US official has said that US sanctions on Iran, reimposed on November 5, have been effective and have received “almost entire compliance” from the world at large.
During an interview with VOA’s Arabic-language sister network Alhurra in Dubai on Monday, Brian Hook, the US Special Representative for Iran, said: “We have seen almost entire compliance with our sanctions regime. And we don’t anticipate having to sanction any major companies, because we haven’t seen any evidence that these companies want to choose the Iranian market over the United States market.”
Iran Focus
London, 20 Nov – The Iranian government has targeted members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq) for the past 40 years, but they have proven exceptionally resilient.
Today, Iran’s ministry of intelligence uses lobbyists, PR firms, and social media for a subtler character assassination of the MEK. Well-crafted editorials placed by PR firms and front groups posing as human rights or social justice organizations appear in publications in the US and Europe. Members of the Iranian government, intelligence, and academic sectors who have ensconced themselves in American and European institutions, including serving as government staffers and subject matter analysts, appear on cable news shows.
