Iran, Cuba sign 7 cooperation agreements

By

-

December 4, 2023

President Ebrahim Raisi and Miguel Díaz-Canel also issued a joint statement on strengthening strategic relations between Tehran and Havana.

According to the documents, Iran and Cuba will strengthen cooperation in various sectors of science and technology, health, agriculture, energy and mines, communications and medicine.

The Cuban president, who is heading a high-ranking politico-economic delegation, was welcomed by Iran’s Minister of Health and Medical Education Bahram Einollahi at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport upon his arrival.

Díaz-Canel will also hold separate meetings with a number of Iranian authorities and tour an exhibition showcasing the latest joint achievements reached in cooperation with Cuba in medical and pharmaceutical fields.

Back in June, the Iranian president traveled to Havana and met with his Cuban counterpart. In the presence of the two presidents, Iran and Cuba signed six agreements to expand bilateral economic, political and judicial cooperation.

Gaza’s economic losses amount to $700mn since start of war: Report

By

IFP Media Wire

-

December 4, 2023

Gaza’s poverty rate is set to soar to more than 90 percent, Qalalwa said on Sunday.

At least 147,000 had stopped working and around 56,000 businesses had closed and unemployment is expected to rise to about 65 percent, he added.

Excluding the current conflict, the economic losses in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when Israel began its siege amounts to about $35bn, stated Qalalwa.

According to a report released last month, the ongoing conflict in Gaza could set back Palestine’s economy by as much as 16 years.

Titled Gaza War: Expected Socio-Economic Impacts on the State of Palestine, it outlines a grim forecast for the Palestinian economy due to the comprehensive siege of Gaza by Israel, leading to severe economic disruptions.

It was issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

A sharp decline is expected in the Human Development Index (HDI), setting the State of Palestine back by between 11 and 16 years, depending on the intensity of the conflict.

The economic impact of the conflict is expected to exacerbate humanitarian crises, including widespread displacement.

“The economic consequences of the war will have direct and indirect effects on the humanitarian situation, and vice versa, including large-scale displacement,” the report added.

“The regional impacts of the Gaza war are multi-layered and dependent on the scale and scope of the military escalation,” the report warned.

A new analysis by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has also warned Israel’s war could set the Palestinian economy in Gaza and the West Bank back decades.

Key economic measurements, including employment rates and GDP, have all plunged across Gaza and the West Bank, according to the UNDP analysis.

Southern Gaza facing worst bombardment since early October: UNICEF

By

IFP Media Wire

-

December 4, 2023

“This is the worst bombardment of the war right now in south Gaza. I am seeing massive child casualties,” James Elder said on X.

He added: “We have a final warning to save children; and our collective conscience.”

In a separate video message, Elder stated he felt like he was “running out of ways” to describe the horrors children in the Gaza Strip face.

“I feel like I’m almost failing in my ability to convey the endless killing of children here,” he noted.

The Israeli army resumed bombing the Gaza Strip early Friday after declaring an end to a week-long humanitarian pause. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and 1,500 injured since Friday in Israeli airstrikes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Israel launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7.

More than 15,500 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed in Israeli attacks since then.

Muslims in US swing states vow to ‘abandon Biden’ over Gaza war

By

IFP Media Wire

-

December 4, 2023

Activists from Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin unveiled the #AbandonBiden movement at an event in Dearborn on Saturday.

“We’re looking into finding ways to build a mechanism of coordination between all the swing states so that we’re constantly working together to ensure that Muslim Americans will come out in all of these states, and that Mr. Biden will lose each and every one of them,” said Hassan Abdel Sala, a professor at the University of Minnesota, as quoted by Politico.

“We don’t only have the money, but we have the actual votes. And we will use that vote to save this nation from itself,” Jaylani Hussein, director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told attendees in Dearborn, Michigan.

He told Newsweek on Sunday that community leaders are “not going to allow this country to continue to uplift the military industrial complex and continue to get us into wars and continue to not value life.”

As part of their campaign, activists also called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where fighting resumed after a weeklong truce expired on Friday. The White House has urged Israel to minimize civilian deaths in the Palestinian enclave and backed short-term “humanitarian pauses,” but has refused to endorse a comprehensive ceasefire. Israel states that its goal is to eliminate Hamas in Gaza and has argued that a full cessation of hostilities would only benefit the militants.

Biden and other top US officials are facing pressure from Muslim and leftist groups, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who are demanding that Washington take a tougher stance on Israel.

The Biden campaign has also seen some worrying signs that the president may be losing a grip on battleground states. A New York Times/Siena College poll revealed last month that Trump was leading in five of the six key swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Israel says expanding its ground operations to whole of Gaza strip

By

IFP Media Wire

-

December 4, 2023

“The IDF is resuming and expanding the ground operation against Hamas’ strongholds across the whole Gaza Strip,” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a news conference Sunday.

Hagari also stressed “the importance of air assistance provided by the Air Force to ground forces”, stating airstrikes against headquarters, weapons manufacturing facilities, terror tunnels, and rocket launching sites limit the threats posed against the ground operation.

“Our policy is clear — we will forcefully strike any threat posed against our territory,” he added.

The IDF has also told civilians to leave large swaths of the Gaza Strip, including number of neighborhoods in southern parts of the enclave, after it resumed its military offensive there.

On Saturday, Israel recalled its team of negotiators from Qatar after reaching a “dead end” in talks, according to a statement released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

An agreement between Israel and Hamas was reached with the help of foreign mediation and saw a seven-day pause in fighting, with the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. More aid was also able to flow into the enclave during the truce.

The pause began on November 24 and was renewed twice before ending on Friday morning.

Thus far the Israeli military operation in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of over 15,500 civilians, according to the local health ministry. The authority has been struggling with counting the exact toll, given the devastation inflicted on the local healthcare system, though it estimates that around 70% of Israel’s victims were women and children.

Hamas: Biden, Blinken complicit in Israeli crimes against Gazans

By

IFP Media Wire

-

December 4, 2023

Osama Hamdan, the representative of Hamas in Lebanon and also a member of the movement’s Politburo, made the comments in a Sunday press conference in Beirut, as Israel pressed ahead with a new round of its indiscriminate strikes on Gaza.

“The American administration, its president [Joe Biden], and his Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken are complicit in [shedding of] Palestinian blood [as well as Israel’s] massacres, [and] crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and they will pay the price for their crimes,” he said.

The Hamas official called for prosecution of senior Biden administration’s officials in international courts as war criminals, while praising “the free American people who have raised their voices loudly in rejecting the [Israeli] aggression.”

“We call on every free person in the United States, who rejects the crimes of the occupation, to withhold their votes from Biden and his party’s candidates in all states, and every candidate who supports the Zionist massacres against the Palestinian people,” Hamdan added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Hamas official reiterated that despite Israel’s brutal aggression and genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, the regime will not achieve any of its goals.

“What the occupation failed to achieve in more than 50 days before the truce, it will not achieve afterward [either] no matter how long this war continues,” he continued, referring to an Egyptian- and Qatari-mediated truce deal that marked a lull in the unabated Israeli aggression against Gaza.

He stressed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Netanyahu and his army will only reap failure and severe defeat, more bodies of his soldiers, [and] destruction of their tanks and vehicles.”

Israel started the war against Gaza on October 7 after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements launched the surprise Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

According to Gaza’s health ministry more than 15,500 Palestinians have been killed and over 41,300 others wounded since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on the coastal territory.

Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, the US has been Israel’s biggest ally, providing it with thousands of arms consignments. Washington, which has backed Tel Aviv’s ferocious attacks as a means of “self-defense,” has also been casting its veto against the UN Security Council resolutions that called on the occupying regime to cease its aggression.

Iran, Oman FMs call on intl. community’s intervention to stop Israeli carnage against Gaza

By

IFP Editorial Staff

-

December 4, 2023

Hossein Amirabdollahian and Sayyid Badr Albusaidi

The two top diplomats made the plea during a meeting in Tehran on Sunday night.

In the meeting, Amirabdollahian said the killing of over 16,000 Palestinian citizens by the Zionist regime during 50 days of strikes against Gaza breached all international laws and regulations and the principles stipulated in the Geneva Conventions, and called it “a clear example of genocide and war crimes.”

He noted, “Unfortunately the new round of attacks against Gaza has resumed after the recent 7-day pause, with the presence of US secretary of state in the Zionist regime’s war cabinet, which indicates the US government’s irrefutable role in supporting the Zionists’ war crimes against Palestinian citizens in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Amirabdollahian urged Muslim states as well as the international community to take effective measures to stop the Israeli regime’s military raids against Gaza and the West Bank, completely lift the Gaza siege, open its crossings, deliver humanitarian aid into the enclave, and reverse the Palestinians’ forced displacement.

For his part, Albusaidi slammed Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank and demanded all countries to take an immediate measure to stop the carnage.

The two sides underlined the continuation of joint efforts at the regional and international levels to support the Palestinian nation.

They also called for the further expansion of bilateral ties and cooperation specially in economic and trade fields.

Yemen targets two Israeli ships in Red Sea: Armed force spokesman

By

IFP Media Wire

-

December 4, 2023

On Sunday, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, the spokesman of the Yemeni armed forces, said two Israeli ships named Unity Explorer and Number Nine were targeted in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait earlier in the day.

He stated that the first Israeli ship was targeted with a naval missile, and the second ship was struck with a drone after they rejected warnings from the Yemeni navy.

“In support of the Palestinian nation, we’ve disrupted the passage of Zionist enemy ships,” he added.

Saree maintained that the Yemeni armed forces will continue to prevent Israeli ships from passing through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea until the attacks “on our brothers in Gaza come to a halt.”

“Today, we are in a decisive fight against the US and the Zionist enemy and we will continue this until attacks on Gaza are stopped,” he continued.

Yemeni forces launched missile and drone attacks on targets in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine after the aggression on Gaza began in early October.

Earlier, The Pentagon confirmed an American warship and multiple commercial vessels came under attack in the Red Sea on Sunday. The UK’s Maritime Trade Operations agency has also announced that it had been made aware of reports of a drone attack in the Bab el-Mandeb strait of the Red Sea. It also stated that drones originating from Yemen were active in the area and that there had been a possible explosion.

On November 19, Ansarullah fighters boarded a commercial ship believed to be ultimately owned by a major Israeli businessman with links to the Tel Aviv regime.

The Yemenis have stressed that any ship with links to Israel will be a legitimate target if it passes the waters off Yemen’s ports in the Red Sea.

Reports have shown that Israeli shipping companies have already decided to reroute their vessels in fear of attacks by Yemeni forces.

Saree told Yemen’s al-Masirah TV that Yemen is also prepared to respond to any retaliatory attack by the US and Israel and their allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The attacks by Yemenis are part of a broader military campaign that targets Israeli and US interests and involves resistance groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The campaign is aimed at forcing the regime to halt its aggression on Gaza and to press Washington to end its support for the aggression.

Iraqi resistance forces have launched dozens of attacks on US military bases in Iraq and Syria while Lebanon’s Hezbollah has been engaged in almost daily attacks on Israeli bases in northern Palestine over the past two months.

Israel resumed its attacks on Gaza early on Friday after a seven-day truce with Hamas.

More than 15,500 people have been killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza since October 7 when the aggression was launched in response to the killing of 1,200 Israeli settlers and military forces in an operation by Hamas.

Iran’s anti-narcotics chief warns of rising industrial drug production in Afghanistan

By

IFP Editorial Staff

-

December 3, 2023

During his visit to Mashhad, neighboring Afghanistan, Eskandar Momeni emphasized a strategic policy focusing on addiction prevention, supply combat, and coordinated addiction treatment efforts.

Highlighting the nation’s priority on preventive measures due to the absence of a clear global strategy to curtail drug production, Momeni disputed Taliban claims of reduced drug cultivation.

He stressed the absence of evidence indicating a decline, citing a significant rise in industrial drug production in Afghanistan that “poses a grave threat globally.”

Momeni also acknowledged the sacrifices made in the fight against drugs in the Islamic Republic, citing an 11% increase in drug detections in Khorasan Razavi Province and the loss of 13 agents’ lives this year.

Official figures say more than 4,000 people have died in the fight against drug traffickers in Iran over the past 40 years.

Tehran faces critical air pollution crisis

By

IFP Editorial Staff

-

December 3, 2023

The dire state marks the air quality as red, signifying an unhealthy environment for all groups.

Amid this red-level pollution, cautionary measures are strongly advised. Individuals with heart or lung conditions, the elderly, and children are urged to refrain from prolonged or intense outdoor activities.

More in pictures:

1 of 20