Report: Iran makes arrest over municipality cyberattack
The source said the arrested person, along with several other suspects, had been under scrutiny for being involved in hacking into the municipality’s security cameras and systems on Thursday.
The attack, on the eve of commemoration ceremonies for the demise of the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, disrupted the municipality’s surveillance cameras and website and other internal as well as communication systems.
The head of Tehran City Council had earlier blamed the Israeli regime’s spy agency, anti-government groups, and all forces against the Islamic Revolution, most notably the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), known by Iranians as the “hypocrites”.
Mehdi Chamran said, “Detailed planning was carried out by the Mossad and the hypocrites and the cooperation of the two with all counter-revolutionaries” was behind the cyberattack.
The cyberattack was followed by the robbery of a branch of Bank Melli Iran in downtown Tehran, more than a dozen perpetrators of which were nabbed a few days later.
Iran, Turkmenistan sign 13 agreements on bilateral cooperation
The agreements, in the political, economic, trade, transportation, investment, new technologies, the environment, sports, energy, judicial, education and research, and tourism fields, were signed in the presence of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Berdymukhamedov on Wednesday in the Iranian capital.
Among the officials who signed the agreements were Iranian ministers of road and urban development and culture, and the chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), as well as provincial governors.
The Turkmen president arrived in Tehran on Tuesday evening at the head of a high-ranking delegation. This is the first visit by Berdymukhamedov to Tehran as the president of Turkmenistan and is meant to reciprocate a visit by Raisi to the Central Asian country last year.
Raisi led a political and economic delegation to attend the 15th Summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in December last year.
Russia hints to likely recognize Taliban govt. in Afghanistan
“Such prospects do exist. The conditions were described by the Russian president [Vladimir Putin] and the foreign minister [Sergey Lavrov],” said Kabulov, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s Second Asian Department.
“Inclusive ethnopolitical government should be the first step towards this. We make no secret of this and we say so outright to our Afghan partners. As soon as this happens, there will be the basis for a serious discussion. We will act regardless of what the United States and everybody else may think,” he added.
Kabulov remarked for the time being it was a problem for the Taliban to make a decision in favor of creating such a government, but “this psychological barrier has to be negotiated.”
“For the sake of retaining power they will have to agree to this. We say so very frankly,” he noted.
Iranian public urged to save water amid acute scarcity
In downtown Tehran, a megacity of over 8.5 million, a large banner went up on Valiasr Square, drawing attention to a declining inflow of water to the country’s dams and calling on people to save water.
Along with other states in the Middle East and those in North Africa, Iran — a semi-arid country — is heading fast toward severe water scarcity, officials have warned.
A host of threats are posed to Iran’s water supply, including climate change, population growth, mass migration, and resource mismanagement.
Downpour levels have sharply plummeted in Iran over the past years, leaving many regions suffering from drought.
Several protests were held late last year in the provinces located in the southern half of the country against what many called mismanagement of water reservoirs.
US says ready to conclude, implement JCPOA if irrelevant issues dropped
Ned Price announced on Tuesday the US awaits a constructive response from Iran on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal that excludes “extraneous” issues, a possible reference to Tehran’s demand that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) be dropped from “terrorism list”.
“We await a constructive response from the Iranians, a response that leaves behind issues that are extraneous to the JCPOA,” the spokesperson said, referring to the deal formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Speaking at a briefing, Price was responding to questions about the Iranian foreign minister’s statement that Tehran had put forward a new proposal on reviving the agreement, which the US spokesperson did not address in detail.
“As we and our European partners have made clear, we are prepared to immediately conclude and implement the deal we negotiated in Vienna, the deal that has been on the table for a number of months now for a mutual return to full compliance with the JCPOA. But for that to happen, Tehran needs to decide to drop demands that go beyond the scope of the JCPOA, needs to decide to drop issues that are extraneous to the JCPOA,” the spokesman stated.
“We believe that if Iran makes this political decision, we’ll be in a position to conclude and to pursue a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA very swiftly. If Iran does not do that, it will further imperil the odds that we will ever be able to reach a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA,” he continued.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has stated Tehran has proposed what he called a new political package to resolve differences during the Vienna talks.
Amirabdollahian added that the US insisted on the approval of the recent resolution against Tehran at the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) with the aim of exerting pressure on Iran and extracting concessions from the country. He described the resolution as hollow.
The top diplomat also noted Iran intensified its nuclear activities while notifying the IAEA of its move before the approval of the resolution at the Board of Governors.
He noted that despite this, Iran will not shy away from talks and it’s exchanging messages with the other side through EU Foreign Policy Chief Josef Borrell and his deputy Enrique Mora.
Iranian officials have stressed the ball is in the US’s court and that Washington must make the necessary political decisions.
Iran insists that the nuclear talks must lead to the removal of all American sanctions that were imposed against Tehran following Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the landmark agreement in May 2018. Tehran has also demanded credible guarantees that Washington will not abandon the deal again.
President Raisi of Iran officially welcomes Turkmen counterpart
The Turkmen president, who arrived in Tehran on Tuesday evening at the head of a high-ranking delegation, was welcomed by Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Rostam Ghassemi.
The two leaders are scheduled to hold bilateral meetings, sign intergovernmental documents, and hold a joint press conference.
This is the first visit by Berdymukhamedov to Tehran as the president of Turkmenistan to reciprocate a visit by Raisi to the central Asian state last year.
Raisi led a political and economic delegation to attend the 15th Summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in December last year.
On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian met with his Turkmen counterpart Rashid Meredov to highlight the agenda for the two-day stay of the Turkmen delegation.
8 die at birthday party blast near Tehran
The blast followed a fire that broke out during the birthday party at a cafe in Shahriar, 30 kilometers south of Tehran, according to reports.
Three children, three women and a man died on the spot, and a three-year-old boy died at the hospital, Shahin Fathi, the head of the Red Crescent Society of Tehran’s Province said.
The cause of the explosion is not reported yet, but according to preliminary findings a helium balloon burst into flames and triggered the tragic incident.
Iran slams forced deportation of asylum seekers from UK to Rwanda
Khatibzadeh stated that the move is not only a shame for the British government, but also for all those who have tried very hard to conceal the colonialist background of Britain and present quite a clean face of London.
“Forced deportation of the asylum seekers to a third country and the deadly silence of the self-proclaimed flag-bearers of human rights and the concerned international organizations is not only a shame for them all, but also obvious breaching of the asylum seekers’ human rights,” he added.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman added that the ongoing process is the other side of the coin of deception of London, that tries to present an unreal, engineered face of Iran’s realities in a systematic media campaign.
He said that the Persian language opponent media, based in London both present and engineered false image of Iran, and a fabulous false image about the living conditions in Europe, providing the path for the perilous and dangerous exit of some Iranian citizens from their own country.
Khatibzadeh noted that although those few people do unjust against themselves, and as a result against their own country, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the framework of its sovereign responsibilities, emphasizes that those people, under Convention 1951 and its related protocol, have rights that need to be respected and deporting them to a 3rd country is a dangerous method that abolishes the remainder of the international regime to safeguard the asylum seekers.
He reminded the international society that despite the economic hardships with which Iran is entangled, Iran is generously hosting millions of asylum seekers from different countries, including Afghanistan, but the self-proclaimed flag-bearers of human rights cannot tolerate the presence of a few thousands of them, who have been deceived by them themselves, and have tolerated the hardships of homelessness.
Iraq says will repay 2020 gas debts to Iran ‘within two days’
In a statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency on Tuesday, Ahmed Musa, the ministry’s spokesman, said the incumbent government in Baghdad was working to resolve the crisis surrounding the country’s energy dues.
Borrowing, he said, was one of the solutions to repay the debts to Tehran.
“We announce today that the dues for 2020 will be paid within two days in accordance with the approved contexts to prevent a decrease in the quantities of gas flowing to Iraq,” the official said.
Earlier this month, the Iraqi ministry said Iran had reduced five million cubic meters of exported gas, resulting in reduction of hours of electric power supply in the Arab country.
Iraq says its failure to approve the 2022 budget was behind the delay in repaying the debts, as the country is grappling with an internal political rift hindering an agreement on forming a government and holding a presidential election.
Iraq, which largely depends on energy imports from Iran, is forced to follow a complicated mechanism to do business with the Islamic Republic due to the harsh economic sanctions imposed by the US on its eastern neighbor.
