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President Raisi: Iran security not reliant on foreign powers

Ebrahim Raisi

Addressing a graduation ceremony of Iranian military cadets on Monday, President Raisi said Iran’s ‘endogenous’ security is a known fact for everyone in the world.

“The security of the country comes from the participation of people in different scenes,” Raisi said, three days after the parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections were held in the country, adding, “The security of the country is based on the awareness and vigilance of devoted border guards.”

He also praised the armed forces for “shielding the nation against harms and threats.”

The Iranian president also called for strengthening the country’s defense power as an element that boosts the national power.

President Raisi drew a contrast between the Iranian armed forces and the US army, saying the latter is “is the most hated armed force in the world.”

He referred to US support for Israel during its months-long genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, saying it has become a major source of concern in today’s world.

Iran scorns US stance on Tehran-Moscow space interaction

Nasser Kanaani

Asked about the US’ criticism of the launch of the Iranian Pars-1 satellite from a spaceport in Russia, Kanaani said at a weekly presser on Monday that nobody is allowed to raise doubts about the peaceful cooperation between Iran and Russia.

Dismissing the US’ concerns, the spokesman stated, “The defense and space cooperation between Iran and the Russian Federation is conventional and in accordance with international law.”

“Iran has extensive cooperation with Russia. It is the right of countries to cooperate within the framework of international relations,” he added.

Brushing off the “baseless” claims made by the US, Kanaani said there are “political motives” behind the American allegations against Iran-Russia cooperation or the comments about regional crises, such as the Ukraine war.

“Iran will maintain cooperation with friendly countries within the framework of its rights,” the spokesman stressed.

His comments came after the US alleged that the launches of Iranian satellites violate the UN Security Council resolutions.

On February 29, Iran launched its Pars-1 research and remote sensing satellite into orbit from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome spaceport using a Soyuz launcher.

The satellite’s primary mission includes practical imaging, developing the market for domestic remote sensing data, and testing technologies for future operational satellites.

US VP calls for ‘immediate’ ceasefire in Gaza in rare rebuke of Israel

Kamala Harris

“Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table,” Harris said on Sunday.

“This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in.”

In some of the strongest criticism of Israel yet by the administration of US President Joe Biden, Harris stated Israel must do more to allow the delivery of aid, including opening new border crossings and committing not to impose “unnecessary restrictions”.

“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris added during a speech to mark the violent suppression of civil rights protesters by police in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.

“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.”

Harris also addressed Thursday’s incident during which 120 Palestinians were killed as they tried to access food aid in Gaza City, saying that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”.

“Our hearts break for the victims of that horrific tragedy,” she added.

Harris also challenged Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire deal that US officials say has been broadly accepted by Israel.

“Hamas needs to agree to that deal,” she said, adding, “Let’s get a ceasefire. Let’s reunite the hostages with their families. And let’s provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza.”

Harris’s comments come as Biden is facing mounting pressure from left-leaning voters over his support for Israel ahead of November’s presidential election.

Democrats are increasingly concerned that Biden’s stance on the war could cost him votes, especially in Michigan, one of a handful of battleground states likely to decide the outcome of the election.

During the Democratic primary in Michigan last week, more than 100,000 voters cast a vote for “uncommitted” in a rebuke of the president’s position on Gaza.

Biden won Michigan, which has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, by only about 150,000 votes in 2020.

Former President Donald Trump carried Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016, becoming the first Republican to win the Midwestern state since 1988.

Sudan rejects WSJ claim over Iran seeking naval base on Red Sea coast

Red Sea

“I have read the article published in American daily newspaper The Wall Street Journal. The news story is false and fabricated,” Ali told the Arabic service of Russia’s Sputnik news agency on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum 2024 in the southwestern Turkish city of Antalya on Sunday.

He made clear that Iran has “never asked Sudan to establish a base there. I paid a visit to Iran lately, and the issue was never raised during my stay”.

Earlier in the day, The Wall Street Journal daily claimed that Iran had sought permission from Sudanese authorities to set up a permanent naval base on its Red Sea coast.

The newspaper quoted a senior Sudanese intelligence official as saying that Iran offered Sudan advanced weaponry, including a helicopter-carrying warship, in exchange for consent to build the base.

The official, Ahmed Hassan Mohamed, alleged that the base would have allowed Iran to “gather intelligence” and “station warships” near the vital Suez Canal and the Israeli-occupied territories.

Iranian daily: Did gov’t hear people’s alarming abstention from the vote?

Iran Election

In an article titled “Alienation From the Government”, Etemad wrote on Monday, “The outcome of the recent elections will not even meet the minimum expectations of the organizers and soon its fallout will be revealed.”

In a pessimistic note, the daily added that many people in Iran are no longer hopeful as “there are no signs on the horizon” that the ruling establishment will cater to the demands of the majority.

“It seems there is no opiate  more addictive than power and it is unlikely that the barrier of power will let them hear the message of the majority; otherwise how is it possible that three consecutive elections cannot open up their eyes and ears?” Etemad asked, referring to the officials.

The daily warned that the voter apathy, especially from the younger generations will debilitate the national power. It suggested that the best way to make amends is to move away from the “appointed institutions to elected ones based on people’s will and make up for the past failures in the upcoming presidential elections.”

Iranians went to the polls on Friday to choose the new members for the 290-seat parliament and 88-member Assembly of Experts that chooses and oversees the performance of the Iranian Leader.

About 25 million people out of the 61 million eligible voters cast their ballots.

Vote count in Iran elections over

Iran Election

In all provinces across the country, including the capital Tehran, the principlists garnered the largest number of the votes after disillusioned reformists shunned the polls.

Extreme-right leaning figures mostly belonging to the Perseverance Front Party, like Seyyed Mamhoud Nabavian, Amir Hossein Sabeti, and Hamid Rasayei topped the final list, each getting around 500 thousands votes.

Incumbent parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led the charts in the previous round of elections with over 1.26 million votes, emerged fourth on the list with mere 440 thousand votes.

Over 15,000 candidates were vying for the parliament seats, while 144 candidates ran for the 88-member Assembly of Experts that oversees the performance of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution.

More than 61 million people, out of the country’s 87-million strong population, were eligible to vote in the elections held on Friday.

Unofficial figures put the turnout at about 41 percent.

Five of the candidates  represent religious minorities namely Jews, Assyrians, Zoroastrians, and Armenians. The lawmakers are elected for a 4-year term, with no limitation for the incumbent or former parliamentarians to run again.

Several killed in Israeli raid on aid truck in Gaza

Gaza War

Al Jazeera reported the bombing targeted “the truck belonging to a Kuwaiti association in the Al-Brook area on Al-Bahr Street”.

Hamas announced the attack indicated that “the occupation’s continued targeting of aid convoys expresses an unprecedented level of criminality and brutality in contemporary history”.

The attack comes a few days after another Israeli attack on aid seekers killed more than a hundred people in Gaza City.

Residents had gathered seeking food on 29 February from an aid convoy, with the area completely cut off by Israeli soldiers.

The military claims it did not strike the convoy and that most deaths were due to a stampede.

These findings contradict the words of Palestinian officials and eyewitnesses, who said people were indiscriminately shot at by Israeli forces while waiting for food aid in Gaza City.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the army only fired shots to disperse the stampede after their forces were retreating.

The UN confirmed a large number of people being treated in Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital had gunshot wounds, while media outlets that investigated the video of the convoy initially released by the Israeli army found that it was “not one single sequence” and had been “edited into four sections”.

The aid convoy incident killed 120 people and injured hundreds, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The death toll from Israel’s onslaught on Gaza since early October 2023 has surpassed 30,400, most of them women and children. More than 70,000 others have been injured while thousands more remain unaccounted for.

The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to more than two million Palestinians living there.

Majority of Americans disapprove of Biden’s policy regarding Gaza war: Survey

Joe Biden

At the same time, 19% of respondents said Israel had not gone far enough, and 24% said Israel’s response was about right, the poll found on Sunday.

The poll also revealed growing sympathy among US residents for the Palestinian people, as 33% of respondents said the United States is doing too little to help the Palestinians. In addition, 30% of Americans think that the US is doing too much to help Israel.

The poll was conducted from February 21-28 and surveyed 1,500 people.

Israel has launched a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7. The ensuing Israeli bombardment has killed 30,410 people and injured 71,700 others with mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Iraqi PM praises Tehran for standing by Baghdad during war with Daesh

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed S. Al-Sudani

According to Iraq’s Al-Ahed news agency, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani made the comments in an interview with al-Rafidain Center for Dialogue, which was published on Sunday.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is our neighbor and we have many religious and social commonalities. During the fight against Daesh, Iran stood by us,” Sudani stated.

He added that the government of Iraq is trying to get the viewpoints of different parties present in the country close together.

The Takfiri terrorist group began a campaign of terror in Iraq in 2014 and then took control of vast swathes in lightning attacks across the region.

Iraq declared victory over the terrorist group in December 2017 after a three-year counter-terrorism military campaign, in which Hashd al-Sha’abi, also known as Popular Mobilization Units, played a major role.

Last December, Iraq’s former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, admitted that late commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, played a pivotal role in the anti-terrorism fight in his country, saying Iraq would have failed to defeat Daesh terrorists if it was not for General Soleimani’s assistance.

Elsewhere in his interview, Sudani reflected on the presence of foreign forces in Iraq within the framework of a so-called US-led international coalition.

“All conditions and issues, which had caused the international coalition to be present in Iraq are now gone,” the Iraqi prime minister said.

He added that his government will continue efforts to end the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.

Sudani noted, “The mission of foreign [military] advisors will come to an end according to a timetable to be drawn up by the Higher Military Committee.”

The committee was established in January to set a timetable for a phased withdrawal of foreign troops and ending the US-led coalition’s presence in Iraq.

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 based on false claims about Baghdad possessing weapons of mass destruction, leaving a trail of destruction, death, and chaos in the Arab country.

The US and its allies re-launched a military campaign in 2014 to supposedly fight off Daesh. The group had emerged in Iraq and neighboring Syria earlier as Washington was running out of excuses to extend its meddling in the West Asia region or enlarge it in scale.

The US military claimed to be ending its combat mission in Iraq in 2021 but said it would retain some 2,500 troops in the country as alleged advisors.

The Iraqi prime minister also criticized the international community’s failure to put an end to the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“The issue of Palestine is a fundamental issue for the people of Iraq,” Sudani said, adding, “The [Iraqi] government’s position is that the aggression against Gaza must stop and the scope of [the Israeli] war [on the territory] should not expand.”

The death toll from Israel’s onslaught on Gaza since early October 2023 has surpassed 30,400, most of them women and children. More than 70,000 others have been injured while thousands more remain unaccounted for.

The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to more than two million Palestinians living there.

Famine in Gaza deepening, airdropping aid ‘ineffective’: Report

Gaza War

The office said in a statement on Telegram that “2.4 million people suffer from severe food shortages and famine is deepening further in Gaza and the north.”

It announced the famine “is worsening in the northern and Gaza governorates, where so far 15 children have succumbed to hunger, malnutrition and dehydration” and this “threatens the lives of more than 700,000 Palestinian citizens suffering from extreme hunger”.

The media office pointed out that “dropping aid by air and turning a blind eye to bringing it in through the crossings is an attempt to circumvent the radical solutions to the problem”.

“Aerial aid drops now carry serious consequences for the people, posing a major challenge, as some of them are dropped near the buffer zone (with Israel) or areas controlled by the occupation army or located within the occupied Palestinian territories,” it noted.

It added this “poses a danger of death to citizens attempting to obtain aid.”

“The aid that is dropped by air does not achieve justice at all” and requires people to “run after this aid that does not reach safe places in disgraceful, humiliating and inhuman behavior”.

The office reiterated that it is “holding the US administration, the international community and the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the genocidal war being waged by the occupation against civilians, children and women” and also holds them responsible “for the famine and promoting the starvation policy”.

The US said Saturday that it had carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian aid into Gaza, with more than 30,000 meals parachuted from military planes.

Days ago, the Egyptian army announced in a statement the participation of Qatar and France in an aerial operation in which Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates took part to provide aid to the Gaza Strip, which has been witnessing an Israeli war since Oct. 7.

Israel has launched a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7. The ensuing Israeli bombardment has killed 30,410 people and injured 71,700 others with mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

At least 15 children have died in the past few days at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, and the enclave’s health ministry has said it fears for the lives of six remaining children there.

Responding to the “horrific” recent deaths of Palestinian children due to malnutrition, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced the “deaths are man-made, predictable and entirely preventable”.

“Gaza has become hell on earth. When will the world say ‘enough’?” it warned.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has also warned that many more children in Gaza will die of dehydration and malnutrition unless there is direct intervention to provide assistance.

“Now, the child deaths we feared are here and are likely to rapidly increase unless the war ends and obstacles to humanitarian relief are immediately resolved,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF regional director for MENA, in a statement.

“The sense of helplessness and despair among parents and doctors in realising that lifesaving aid, just a few kilometres away, is being kept out of reach, must be as unbearable, but worse still are the anguished cries of those babies slowly perishing under the world’s gaze. The lives of thousands more babies and children depend on urgent action being taken now.”

Secretary General of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard has also stated the deaths of children succumbing to dehydration and malnutrition are the “result of acts by Israeli authorities which engineered famine”.

“They knew the likely outcome of their actions but persisted,” she wrote in a post on X, adding that countries which halted funding to United Nations aid agency UNRWA also “bear responsibility”.