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Russia, Ukraine conduct major prisoner exchange

By
IFP Media Wire
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Russia Ukraine War

A total of 195 Russian servicemen have returned home from Ukrainian-controlled territory as a result of negotiations, the Russian Defense Ministry announced in a statement, while 195 POWs were handed over to Kiev. The exchange is the largest to date since the start of the conflict between the two countries.

The freed Russian troops, who were “under mortal danger” in captivity, will be flown to Moscow for treatment and rehabilitation, the ministry said. They’re already receiving medical assistance and psychological support, it added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also confirmed the swap, but provided a different figure in respect of the released Ukrainian POWs. “Our boys are home. 207 guys”, he wrote on Telegram. Zelensky didn’t explain where the alleged extra 12 POWs had come from.

Zelensky thanked the Ukrainian negotiating team, which included military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov, and the head of the president’s office, Andrey Yermak. He didn’t say how many Russian soldiers were released.

The prisoner exchange between the sides was to take place last week, but a Russian Il-76 transport aircraft with 65 Ukrainian POWs on board went down in Russia’s Belgorod Region, which borders Ukraine, on Wednesday.

Moscow has accused Ukrainian forces of downing the aircraft with a surface-to-air missile, saying Kiev had been aware of the ill-fated flight’s route. Zelensky has refused to acknowledge that Kiev’s forces were responsible for bringing down the plane, and has called for an international investigation.

President Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday that a Russian investigation had established with certainty that Kiev used a US-supplied Patriot surface-to-air missile system to down the Il-76 aircraft. He also stated Moscow “insists” that an international probe mentioned by Zelensky is carried out and invited foreign experts to Russia.

The president suggested that Kiev may have targeted the plane with its own POWs in order “to provoke counter measures on our part”. Putin also stressed that Russia won’t stop prisoner exchanges with Ukraine despite recent developments.

US soldiers told to prepare for Gaza war: Report

By
IFP Media Wire
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US Air Force

Circulated earlier this month, the memo instructs an unknown number of troops to be placed “on standby to forward deploy to support troops in the case of on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war”, the news site reported.

The standby order applies to troops stationed in Iraq since last year, according to a separate Pentagon document seen by The Intercept.

The White House has stated on several occasions since October that its support for Tel Aviv would not involve American soldiers fighting alongside their Israeli counterparts.

The US responded to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel by immediately dispatching two aircraft carriers to the region and preparing 2,000 additional troops for deployment to the Middle East, but White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on October 10 that “there is no intention to put US boots on the ground” in Israel or Gaza.

However, US special forces have been active in Israel since October, with senior official Christopher Maier telling reporters at the time that American commandos were “actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things”. The Pentagon has also admitted to flying spy drones over Gaza “in support of hostage recovery efforts”.

Since the conflict began, US troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan have come under fire more than 150 times, with armed groups subjecting their bases to regular drone and rocket barrages. One such attack on an outpost in Jordan on Sunday killed three US soldiers and injured several dozen others.

American ships and warplanes have also launched several strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, in a bid to break the Houthi blockade on “Israel-linked” merchant shipping passing through the Red Sea. The Houthis have responded by targeting US commercial and military vessels in the area.

AFC Asian Cup 2023: Iran survives Syria penalty drama to face Japan

By
IFP Media Wire
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Iran Football Team

Mehdi Taremi was brought down by the Syrian defender and he converted the penalty with a right-footed shot in the 34th minute at the Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium in Doha, Qatar.

But Syria levelled when Pablo Sabbag came on as a substitute and immediately won a penalty when he beat the offside trap and was fouled by goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand, with Omar Khribin calmly slotting it home to make it 1-1 in the 74th minute..

The condition went from bad to worse just after the 90th minute after Taremi received his second yellow card.

Team Melli won 5-3 in the shootout after the match had ended 1-1 after extra time, extending coach Amir Ghalenoei’s unbeaten run to 15 games since he took charge of Team Melli in March last year.

Syria’s Fahd Youssef saw his penalty saved by Beiranvand in the shootout while Iran converted all their spot kicks, with skipper Ehsan Hajsafi netting the decisive one.

Iran will meet Japan on Saturday in the competition’s quarterfinals.

Iran had stormed to the top of their group with three wins, finishing ahead of the United Arab Emirates in second but Syria finished third in their group behind Australia and Uzbekistan.

IMF says Iran’s economy registered 5.4% growth last year

By
IFP Media Wire
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imf

In a report on the World Economic Outlook, which is published once every three months, the international monetary body said that Iran registered a 5.4% economic growth in 2023, showing a considerable increase compared to a year earlier.

The IMF had put Iran’s economic growth in 2022 at 3.8 percent.

It predicted that Iran’s economy will increase by 3.7 percent in 2024.

In its report in October 2023, the International Monetary Fund had predicted that Iran’s economy will grow by 2.5 percent in 2024.

The 5.4-percent growth of Iran’s economy in 2023 came as the world’s economic growth hit 3.1 percent, showing a slump compared to a year before.

The average economic growth of the developed countries in 2023 stood at only 1.6% while their average economic growth was 2.6 percent in 2022.

In the reported fiscal year, the average economic growth of the developing countries was 4.1 percent.

The report added that the economies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) grew by 2% on average, with Saudi Arabia registering a -1.1 percent economic growth in 2023.

Report: UK allows MKO terror group operate on its soil 

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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MKO

Tasnim added that the information also suggests that three main offices of the group’s television channel is based in Britain.

According to Tasnim, the channel promotes the MKO’s acts of terror and sends encoded messages to the terror group’s offshoots.

It noted that the MKO’s largest organization of money laundering and financing in the world is directed through its UK-based network, and one of the officials of this network is a man Tasnim identified as Sivash Pishehvarz.

Pishehvarz is said to lead two missions: 1-Moneylaundering for the MKO 2-funding the terrorist cells of the group inside Iran in order to help them get the hardware they need.

The MKO is responsible for the killing of thousands of Iranians in the 1980s and beyond. The victims include ordinary citizens and government officials.

They sided with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Iran FM calls on US to stop language of threat following deaths of soldiers in Jordan

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-
Hossein Amirabdollahian

Amirabdollahian noted that Iran’s response under threatening circumstances would be decisive and immediate.

The Iranian foreign minister described resistance as the “existing reality in the face of occupation,” underscoring that the US must stop what he called the “language of threat and blame-game” and focus on a political solution to the Palestine crisis.

His comments come as the US has said it’s going to attack the resistance forces in the region in retaliation for the deaths of US troops in the recent attack on an American base in Jordan.

The US accuses Iran of getting the resistance to hit the US troops. Tehran says the resistance groups do not receive orders from the Islamic Republic and that Iran has no control over them.

The resistance groups themselves have time and again reiterated that they will keep attacking the US and Israel unless the Zionist regime stops its invasion of Gaza, where since early October, around 27 thousand Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed.

Meanwhile Major General Hossein Salami the commander in chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), pointed to the US anti-Iran rhetoric, saying the Islamic Republic is not seeking war, but will not let any threat go unanswered.

Poll: Netanyahu’s public support drops further as war grinds on

By
IFP Media Wire
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Benjamin Netanyahu

New public opinion polls show that 23 percent of respondents want to see him stay in power, while 41 percent would like to see former Defence Minister and War Cabinet Member Benny Gantz take his place.

Numbers that were polled and surveys that were taken just earlier this month – around four weeks ago – saw that support for Netanyahu was at around 29 percent.

When it comes to the number of seats in the coalition, the anti-Netanyahu bloc would have 68 seats if elections were held today and Netanyahu’s bloc would only have 47, meaning that he would not be the premier. He simply would not have enough seats.

So these numbers for Netanyahu are unfavourable given how he has been prosecuting the war.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas in October, in which nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed.

The death toll from Israeli attacks in the besieged territory has jumped to 26,900 since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry in the blockaded Palestinian enclave said on Wednesday. The Health Ministry issued a statement as the deadly Israeli onslaught entered its 117th day.

About 85% of Gazans have been displaced by the Israeli onslaught, while all of them are food insecure, according to the UN. Hundreds of thousands of people are living without shelter, and ⁠less than half of aid trucks are entering the territory than before the start of the conflict.

Top Iran commander: No threat against Islamic Republic will go unanswered

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Hossein Salami

The remarks by Major General Hossein Salami on Wednesday came as the US has stepped up its anti-Iran rhetoric after accusing Tehran of involvement in the death of three US troops in Jordan last week, despite denials by Iranian officials.

Addressing the National Congress for the Commemoration of the 24,000 Martyrs from Tehran, the IRGC commander in chief said, “We sometimes hear some threats from among the words of US officials. We tell them that we won’t leave any threat go unanswered.”

“We are not looking for war, but we are not afraid of war, and this is the reality that is going on in our society,” Major General Salami said.

A drone attack on a US outpost in Jordan left three American forces dead and dozens more injured on Sunday, the first US troops deaths in the region since the start of the Israeli genocide on Gaza in early October.

Dismissing accusations by Washington, Tehran says it has no links to attacks on the US forces in the region as they are related to the resistance groups’ reprisal against the US for aiding the Israeli regime in its ongoing onslaught against Palestinians.

Ex-Pakistani PM Imran Khan, wife jailed in corruption case

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Imran Khan

The politician and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were sentenced by a Pakistani accountability court on Wednesday in the city of Rawalpindi, not far from the capital, Islamabad. Both were charged with the illegal sale of state gifts while Khan was prime minister from 2018 to 2022.

In addition to the sentence, the two have been barred from running for public office for ten years and fined $2.7 million.

This comes after Khan was sentenced to ten years on Tuesday for leaking state secrets. The charges are related to a cipher, a classified cable that was sent to Islamabad by the Pakistani ambassador to Washington in 2022, which allegedly suggested that the US wanted Khan ousted over his neutrality in the Ukraine conflict.

Commenting on the verdict, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) denounced what it called the “complete destruction of every existing law in Pakistan in two days”.

“Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi have faced yet another kangaroo trial in which no right to defense was given to both. Like cipher, this case has no basis to stand in any higher court.”

Both sentences come ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for February 8. The PTI said the “atrocities against [Khan] will be avenged by the power of the vote”.

Khan, a former cricketer-turned-politician, was ousted in a no-confidence vote in 2022, with the opposition accusing him of mismanaging the economy and foreign policy. Khan claims that he was overthrown as a result of a US conspiracy.

Since then, the former leader has fought dozens of legal battles. Islamabad’s attempts to prosecute him sparked massive public unrest with numerous casualties.

Iran’s oil exports increased 50% last year despite US sanctions: Report

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Iran Oil

The Wednesday report by the Japanese daily newspaper Nikkei showed that Iranian overseas oil shipments had reached an average of 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2023, up nearly 50% compared to the previous year and the highest on record over the past five years.

The report cited figures by International Energy Agency showing that Iran’s total crude oil production had reached 2.99 million bpd last year, up by 0.44 million bpd from 2022.

The figures confirm earlier media reports and statements by Iranian government authorities suggesting there was a major surge in Iranian oil production and exports in 2023 despite the fact that the country was still subject to a harsh regime of US sanctions.

China has been responsible for a bulk of Iranian overseas oil sales, according to the same reports.

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