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Official: Plans underway to facilitate Iranian singer Moein’s return to country

By
Seyedeh Maryam Hosseini Lahijani
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Moein

In the latest remarks on the issue, Abdollah Sohrabi, the director general of Iran’s Foreign Ministry’s High Council of Iranians Affairs Abroad has stated that plans are underway with different institutions in the country to get the approval for the singer’s return to his homeland.

He told the Khorassan daily, “Considering that the Iranian culture ministry’s view is maximum attraction, we are planning and making the arrangements on the issue with various institutions, and there is some good news ahead, both regarding Moein and other individuals.”

Moein, along with many pop singers, left Iran after the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 in an exodus out of fear that they would be banned from their artistic activities, while many others chose to stay in the country.

Since then several self-exile singers have returned home.

Moein, originally from the Iranian city of Isfahan, has previously sung a song dubbed “I wish to return to Isfahan.”

The city is called “half of the world” given its historical monuments and tourism attractions.

Report: Iran’s Mostazafan Foundation website hacked

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Cyber Attack

The group, known as Bakhtak meaning incubus in Persian, had previously announced that it hacked the Martyrs’ Foundation in Iran.

The alleged hacking comes a week after another hacker group, dubbed Edalat-e Ali, disrupted the Iranian judiciary’s servers and gained access to millions of files of confidential documents.

The group has published the classified documents on its website and Telegram channel.

Officials have previously said the Israeli regime is behind such acts.

Iran successfully launches Pars 1 satellite

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Iran Pars 1 satellite

The Pars-1 satellite, weighing 150-kilograms, was blasted off aboard Soyuz launch vehicle from a Russian space base.

Iran’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Issa Zarepour had announced the scheduled launch a day earlier.

The satellite is capable of capturing images of 95 percent of Iranian territory to provide a set of remote sensing data used in various fields, including land, forest and water monitoring as well as mining and energy transmission.

Iran is among the world’s top 10 countries in the world capable of developing and launching satellites.

Last month, it successfully put into orbit homegrown Mahda, Keyhan-2 and Hatef-1 satellites with a maximum altitude of 1,100 kilometers above the earth’s surface.

Last year, Iran launched Khayyam satellite to monitor the country’s borders and improve the country’s management and planning of agriculture, natural resources, environmental issues, mining and natural disasters.

Gaza Health Ministry confirms 6 children die from dehydration, malnutrition in enclave’s hospitals

By
IFP Media Wire
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Gaza War

Two children died at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the ministry said on Wednesday. Earlier it reported that four children died at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, while seven others remained in critical condition.

“We ask international agencies to intervene immediately to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in northern Gaza,” Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement, as Israel’s attacks on Gaza continue.

“The international community is facing a moral and humanitarian test to stop the genocide in Gaza.”

Kamal Adwan Hospital’s Director Ahmed al-Kahlout stated that the hospital had gone out of service due to a lack of fuel to run its generators. On Tuesday, Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia also went out of service for the same reason.

In a video posted on Instagram and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification unit, journalist Ebrahem Musalam shows an infant on a bed inside the pediatric department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, as power comes in and out.

Musalam added the children in the department are suffering from malnutrition and a lack of infant formula, and that necessary devices have stopped working due to the constant power outages as a result of fuel shortages.

Palestinian group Hamas on Wednesday said that the closure of Kamal Adwan Hospital would exacerbate the health and humanitarian crisis in Northern Gaza, which is already teetering on the brink of famine as Israel continues to block or disrupt aid missions there.

On Wednesday, Israel announced a convoy of 31 trucks carrying food had entered northern Gaza. The Israeli military office that oversees Palestinian civilian affairs, the Coordination of Government Activity in the Territories (COGAT), also said nearly 20 other trucks entered the north on Monday and Tuesday.

These were the first major aid deliveries in a month to the devastated, isolated area, where the United Nations has warned of worsening starvation.

Israel has held up the entry of aid into Gaza for weeks, with Israeli protesters taking part in demonstrations calling for no aid to be allowed into the territory, even as hunger and disease spread.

UN officials say Israel’s months-long war, which has killed nearly 30,000 people in Gaza, has also pushed a quarter of the population of 2.3 million to the brink of famine.

Project Hope, a humanitarian group operating a clinic in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, has said that 21 percent of the pregnant women and 11 percent of the children under the age of five it has treated in the last three weeks are suffering from malnutrition.

“People have reported eating nothing but white bread as fruit, vegetables, and other nutrient-dense foods are nearly impossible to find or too expensive,” Project Hope added.

In a joint communique on Wednesday, Qatar and France stressed their opposition to an Israeli military offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza and underlined their “rejection of the killing and starvation suffered by the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”.

They called for the opening of all crossings into Gaza, including in the north, “to allow for humanitarian actors to resume their activities and notably the delivery of food supply and pledged jointly $200m effort in support of the Palestinian population”.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, also stated Israel must allow aid trucks into Gaza in order to address the dire humanitarian crisis.

“Hundreds of aid trucks wait in line to cross into Gaza at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom [Karem Abu Salem] crossings to a starving civilian population,” Egeland said in a social media post, with a video showing scores of aid trucks lined up.

“There has not been a single day we have gotten the needed 500 trucks across. The system is broken and Israel could fix it for the sake of the innocent.”

Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has meanwhile noted that medical workers are struggling to serve hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza who are living in dire conditions with nowhere to go.

“Healthcare has been attacked, it’s collapsing. The whole system is collapsing. We are working from tents trying to do what we can. We treat the wounded. With the displacements, people’s wounds have been infected. And I’m not even talking about the mental wounds. People are desperate. They don’t know anymore what to do,” MSF’s Meinie Nicolai stated.

Hamas says Gaza ceasefire agreement with Israel still not close

By
IFP Media Wire
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Israel Hostages

“The gap is still wide. We have to discuss a lot of points with the mediators,” Naim told Al Jazeera from Istanbul on Wednesday.

This comes after United States President Joe Biden said he hopes to have a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza by next Monday, with negotiations appearing to have gathered pace.

However, Naim said the Biden administration’s optimistic posture was not “related to the reality on the ground” and has more to do with domestic political considerations in a US election year.

“If the Americans want to be really optimistic, they have to end their game of double standards,” he said.

“They talk on one hand for stopping the aggression or for achieving a ceasefire and avoiding broadening the conflict into the region. But at the same time they are using the veto in the UN Security Council,” Naim added.

“They are approving $14bn for Israel, they are securing Israel with more ammunitions.”

Naim had previously told Al Jazeera late on Tuesday that Hamas had not yet received an official truce proposal, but that meditators were working with the Israeli side to cement one.

While Hamas was willing to be flexible on some aspects of a potential deal, it would not do so at the expense of its “main, strategic goals”, Naim stated.

He said the Palestinian group’s non-negotiable demands include: A final and total ceasefire, and not just a humanitarian pause; the total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza; and freedom of movement for Palestinians within Gaza.

Naim said Hamas was willing to be flexible on the timing and sequencing of its demands, as long as the total ceasefire begins on day one of the implementation of any agreement.

With regards to the exchange of prisoners and captives and plans for Gaza’s reconstruction, “there is some space for flexibility”, Naim added.

“Hamas has shown great flexibility from the beginning to achieve a ceasefire because we know every added day to this slaughter means 100 to 150 more Palestinian civilians killed.”

“People in the northern part of Gaza are dying because of starvation. We know exactly what this means. Our families are still there,” he added.

Naim said Hamas is also seeking guarantors such as Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, the United Nations, the US and Russia to ensure and verify that any deal is upheld by Israel.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh stressed that the group was ready to continue fighting if necessary, even if it showed flexibility in its negotiations with Israel.

Speaking from Beirut, he called on the Iran-led political and military coalition known as the “axis of resistance” to step up its support for Gaza through political leverage, money and weapons.

“It is the duty of the Arab and Islamic nations to take the initiative to break the starvation conspiracy in Gaza,” Haniyeh said, referring to what Palestinians say appears to be a deliberate policy by Israel to deny them food by blocking humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza.

Haniyeh added that Israel is committing the worst atrocities known to humanity, including the extermination and displacement of civilians, and that any flexibility shown in negotiating with Israel must be matched by his group’s willingness to defend the Palestinian people.

The Hamas leader called for Palestinians to march on Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on the first day of Ramadan, which is likely to be on March 10, in protest at continued restrictions placed by Israel on access for Palestinians to the Muslim holy site.

“The siege of Al-Aqsa and the siege of Gaza are one and the same.”

Since October 7, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed nearly 30,000 people – most of them women and children – and displaced most of the population of the besieged strip. Some 1.5 million are sheltering in the city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, as Israel threatens a ground invasion there.

Lawsuit implicating Biden in Gaza ‘genocide’ gets expedited appeal

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-
Biden Netanyahu

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which is helping litigate the case on behalf of the Palestinian plaintiffs, told Middle East Eye on Wednesday that a hearing has not been scheduled yet but that one could take place sometime in early June.

An opening brief for the plaintiffs is due on 7 March, while the Biden administration’s brief is due on 5 April.

In a blow to the Palestinian plaintiffs, a district judge dismissed the case last month, citing the court’s lack of jurisdiction over the issue. However, the judge also said in his ruling that there was a plausible case for genocide in Gaza.

CCR and the law firm Van Der Hout LLP were seeking the expedited appeal against the court’s ruling, citing the current conditions in Gaza amid Israel’s war “including mass starvation, intentionally inflicted upon plaintiffs, their families, and all the residents of Gaza”.

“The Ninth Circuit’s grant of our motion to expedite is important, as the dire and unlivable conditions in Gaza must be addressed urgently,” Johnny Sinodis of Van Der Hout LLP announced in a statement.

“Each day that the US continues its unrestrained support of Israel, more and more innocent women and children are slaughtered by Israel’s assault and indiscriminate bombing campaign.”

CCR and Van Der Hout LLP initially helped file the lawsuit on 13 November along with a group of Palestinians in the US who are from Gaza or have family there. Among the plaintiffs are also the rights groups Al-Haq and Defense for Children International-Palestine.

The filing accused the administration of failing to “prevent an unfolding genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza amid Israel’s military assault on the besieged enclave. At the time of the filing, Israel had killed around 11,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

In a little over three months, the death toll from the war that started in October has risen to nearly 30,000 Palestinians, with thousands more maimed and injured. UN officials have warned that the besieged enclave’s population is on the verge of starvation.

The Biden administration has continued its unconditional support for Israel despite its ally frustrating its policy goals and the policy splitting the Democratic Party.

“Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children and their families at an unprecedented rate with President Biden’s full support,” said Khaled Quzmar, director at Defense for Children International – Palestine, an organisation that is a plaintiff in the suit.

“While we welcome the expedited appeal, each day that passes without an end to Israel’s genocidal campaign results in catastrophe for Palestinian children in Gaza.”

The Biden administration has focused its efforts on trying to secure a hostage deal, which current and former US officials tell MEE the White House hopes can be turned into a truce.

But the US’s diplomatic push faces pressure from Israel, which has threatened to launch an invasion of the southern city of Rafah where around 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering.

Speaking on the television show Late Night with Seth Meyers, Biden appeared to indicate an openness to a Rafah invasion, saying that Israel had “made a commitment to me” that they have “the ability to evacuate significant portions of Rafah before they go and take out the remainder of Hamas”.

The US has noted executing an evacuation plan for Rafah should be a pre-condition before launching a ground invasion.

Turkey says ready to host Russia-Ukraine talks

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Recep Tayyip Erdogan

With the Russia-Ukraine conflict now into its third year, diplomacy and dialogue should be given a chance for a “fair and lasting resolution”, Erdogan said.

“To achieve this goal, utilizing diplomatic channels at the highest level from every possible avenue is of great importance,” Erdogan declared in Wednesday’s video message to the Ukraine-Southeast Europe Summit in Albania, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been attempting to drum up support for Kiev’s war efforts.

Zelensky has approached Balkan states at the Summit with offers of starting joint arms production. Ukraine is interested in co-production as it is currently experiencing “problems with the supply of ammunition”, which worsens the “situation on the battlefield”.

The Turkish leader, meanwhile, said that insufficient effort has been made towards bringing Russia and Ukraine together and attempting to establish a peaceful discourse. He reiterated “Turkey’s support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity”, adding that he supports Zelensky’s 10-step peace formula “in principle”.

Moscow has repeatedly insisted that it is still ready to settle the hostilities through negotiations, blaming the lack of any diplomatic breakthrough on Kiev. It has previously dismissed Zelensky’s peace formula as an “absurd” ultimatum, as it includes the non-negotiable return of all former Ukrainian territories, as well as the withdrawal of all Russian troops without preconditions.

Ankara played a major role in brokering prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine, and hosted a round of talks between Moscow and Kiev in the spring of 2022. According to Moscow, the sides were close to signing an agreement, but the talks were sabotaged by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who advised Kiev to keep fighting.

Should Russia and Ukraine ever return to the negotiating table, the potential talks will not be the same, as Kiev will have to accept the “new reality”, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month, apparently referring to the incorporation of four former Ukrainian regions – Zaporozhye and Kherson, as well as DPR and LPR – into Russia following referendums in late 2022.

Countdown beings for voting in Iran as campaigning ends

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-
Iran Election

The elections headquarters announced in a Thursday statement that based on Article 56 of the Parliamentary Election Law and Article 23 of the Executive Bylaw of the Assembly of Experts Election Law, campaigning by candidates running in the polls ended 24 hours before the voting, which is scheduled to be held across the country on Friday.

Mohsen Eslami, the spokesperson of the headquarters, said after 8 am on Thursday local time, any campaigning for the 12th parliamentary and sixth Assembly of Experts elections is forbidden.

Over 15,000 candidates compete for the Iranian parliament’s 290 seats in the Friday vote.

144 candidates will also compete for the Assembly of Experts polls held every eight years. Under the Iranian Constitution, the 88-member body selects the Leader, oversees his activities and if necessary replaces him.

Pakistan says US sanctions ‘may not apply’ to gas pipeline project with Iran

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Iran Pakistan Gas Pipeline

“I don’t think that the US sanctions can apply to the IP project at this stage,” Muhammad Ali responded to a question during a news conference in the Pakistani capital.

When asked about US’s anti-Iran sanctions, the interim minister replied that he was unaware of what the Americans wanted in connection with the IP gas pipeline project.

Meanwhile, he said work on 80 kilometers of the pipeline in the Pakistani territory would be carried out, adding that it would take around 1.5 years to complete the pipeline project in the Pakistani territory.

“It will take time to connect it with the Iranian side for the supply of gas,” he added.

The remarks come as Islamabad has given the green light for advancing much-delayed work on gas pipelines within its territory.

Analysts say the project will improve Pakistan’s energy security and support regional industries by providing stable and enhanced gas supplies.

“We should make it a trade border, not an international border, and Pakistan and Iran should actually enhance their trade. And there is so much of informal trade which is going on between both countries. It has to be formalized and increased and to truly go in the national interest and benefit of both nations,” stated Reza Muhammad, president of Islamabad Policy Research Institute.

Iran has extended the project deadline by 180 days until September 2024 so as to avoid a legal dispute with Pakistan at international tribunals.

The project, launched in 2013, required Pakistan to finish the construction of the pipeline on its territory by the end of 2014.

But the work stalled, upsetting Tehran, which has said it already invested $2 billion in the pipeline on its side of the border.

Washington has opposed the pipeline, saying it could violate the illegal sanctions imposed on Tehran.

Pakistan will likely face an 18-billion-dollar fine if it terminates the gas pipeline agreement.

Experts say that Pakistan’s decision to kick off work on the gas pipeline project in its territory comes due to fear of a potential penalty for failing to complete the project.

US spent $12mn to protect Bolton, O’Brien in fear after Iran’s top commander assassination: Report

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Qassem Soleimani

John Bolton and Robert O’Brien were receiving protection for almost one year after they left their posts, the CBS television network reported Tuesday.

The total cost of protection for both individuals was $12,280,324, according to a series of reports by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) obtained by CBS.

The DHS reports do not mention Iran by name, but the CBS report says “Bolton and O’Brien were receiving protection due to possible threats” from Iran.

According to the DHS documents, the protection involves “dedicated special agents, 24 hours a day, covering their homes and offices, as well as domestic and foreign travel.”

Officials like Bolton and O’Brien do not typically receive this level of protection once they leave office, CBS reported.

Bolton received no protection initially after he left the White House.

According to the documents, he started getting protection in December 2021, after Trump — upon his departure from office — directed the Secret Service to provide protection for O’Brien.

For the period ending September 30, 2021, that cost $1,928,922. The current President Joe Biden later directed the Secret Service to extend both men’s protection, according to the DHS reports.

The reports cover only one-year span ending in 2022. Some officials continued to receive protection and do so to this day.

The Associated Press revealed a congressional memo in March 2022 that the State Department had been spending $2 million a month to provide round-the-clock security to Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Brian Hook, the former US envoy for Iran.

When leaving office, Trump also directed the US Secret Service to provide protection to chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for six months, ending July 20, 2021, costing a total of $6,194,121 for those two men and O’Brien.

Trump was president of the United States when he ordered the airstrike that assassinated Gen. Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), on January 3, 2020.

When the US Ain Al-Asad base in Iraq was pounded by Iranian missiles in the wake of the assassination, Washington was certain that Iran’s revenge is serious.

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