Zarif rejects any tie to luxury construction project in N Iran
The ex-minister on Sunday rejected as a sheer lie the claim made in a viral video that he was spending huge sums on the construction of a building in northern Iran.
“The claim that this building, or even a single meter of it, belongs to me or anyone associated with me is 100 percent a lie,” Zarif said.
Iran Covid: Infection cases jump again
The deaths push to 133,718 the number of those killed by the Coronavirus in Iran since the pandemic engulfed the world. According to the Health Ministry, 25,812 new Covid infections were logged in the past day. The Saturday caseload was slightly more than 18,000. The latest infections include 2,543 hospitalizations.
The head of Tehran’s Taskforce for Fighting Covid has said the number of new Covid patients in the capital keeps soaring. Alireza Zali said1,007 people were admitted to hospitals over the past day of whom 290 patients were put at ICU wards. The dominant variant in Iran is now Omicron.
Most Iranian cities are marked red, which means they face the highest level of danger from Covid.
Many others are orange while there are no blue cities across the country where people face the lowest level of threat from the virus.
This as healthcare workers in Iran are busy inoculating people. Over 21 million Iranians are now triple-vaxxed. The total number of Covid vaccine doses administered is more than 137,000,000. Authorities are urging all citizens to get their third doses, also known as boosters. They say people may need to get a fourth dose of Covid vaccine.
UN staff members kidnapped in Yemen; efforts underway to secure release
The staff were abducted on Friday in Abyan governorate, Russell Geekie, a spokesperson for the top UN official in Yemen, said on Sunday.
“The United Nations is in close contact with the authorities to secure their release,” Geekie added.
An official at the UN office in Aden told Reuters that four of those seized were Yemeni nationals.
Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a war against the Arab world’s most impoverished nation in March 2015. The war has been seeking to restore power in Yemen to Riyadh’s favorite officials.
The death toll of the war, now in its seventh year, will reach an estimated 377,000 by the end of 2021, according to a recent report from the UN’s Development Programme.
The fighting has seen some 80 percent of the population, or 24 million people, relying on aid and assistance, including 14.3 million who are in acute need.
Iraq’s top court bars Hoshyar Zebari from running for presidency
In early February, the Iraq’s federal court decided to suspend the nomination of the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) candidate for the Iraqi presidency.
According to the court’s decision published by Iraqi state media, the ruling against Zebari’s candidacy was made on the grounds that he did not meet the conditions of “good reputation and integrity” required by the constitution.
Zebari served as the Iraqi finance minister from 2014 to 2016 before he was removed from his position following a secret parliamentary vote of no-confidence over alleged corruption and misuse of public funds.
Despite Zebari denying the allegation brought against him at the time, 158 MPs out of 249 present in the meeting voted against him. He was later cleared of the charges.
Karzai: Biden must hand Kabul assets over to Afghans
During a press conference in Kabul on Sunday, he acknowledged that the odd people of Afghanistan have shared a position on the reserve and added that the international community should return the money to the people.
Karzai noted that Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan and now the people of Afghanistan should not pay for his activities.
“We are cooperative with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan when it comes to the release of Afghanistan’s assets but the money should be reserved in Afghan Central Bank when it is unfrozen. This reserve belongs solely to the Afghan people not to any government,” Karzai stated.
Karzai acknowledged that the Afghan people themselves are the victims of terrorism and no one can punish the victims.
The ex-president suggested that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan must invite a Loya Jirga-grand gathering – so that the people of Afghanistan decide about their own future.
He along with Abdullah Abdullah sent a letter to the IEA and asked the leadership to invite Afghan officials in exile back to the country.
Nominee of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan for the United Nations Suhail Shaheen has also reacted to Biden’s decision and said the reserve only belongs to the people of Afghanistan.
“Reserve of Da Afghanistan Bank-Afghanistan Central Bank- does not belong to governments or factions but it is property of the people of Afghanistan. It is only used for implementation of monetary policy, facilitation of trade and boosting of the financial system of the country,” Shaheen wrote on Twitter.
Shaheen added that the money has never been used for any other purpose but the ones mentioned.
Referring to the $3.5 billion still frozen in the US banks, Shaheen criticized that freezing and disbursement of the money for any other purpose is injustice and not acceptable to the people of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Central Bank – Da Afghanistan Bank – has also called the decision “unjust”.
DAB said in a statement on Saturday that it will never accept the allocation and provision of Afghanistan’s funds to other people under the name of compensation or humanitarian aid.
It added the money belongs to the people of Afghanistan and has never been used by any Afghan government or any political fraction.
DAB further announced that part of the fund has been invested in the United States so that it be used for specific purposes of the Bank.
Demonstrators in Afghanistan’s capital on Saturday condemned Biden’s order freeing up $3.5 billion in Afghan assets held in the US for families of America’s 9/11 victims and stressed the money belongs to Afghans.
Protesters who gathered outside Kabul’s grand Eid Gah mosque asked America for financial compensation for the tens of thousands of Afghans killed during the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
Analyst: Israel after influencing Vienna talks
Hadi Seyyed-Afghahi told IRNA that Israel has been trying to impede Iran’s nuclear activities from the very outset by assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and launching cyber and terrorist attacks on the country’s nuclear sites.
Swyyed-Afghahi said Israel, along with Saudi Arabia, also spared no effort to prevent the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from being signed in 2015.
He cited former US President Donald Trump as saying that it was former Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who forced him to withdraw from the JCPOA and even assassinate top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
The analyst said the Israeli regime has been pushing its efforts to undermine Vienna talks up to now and has even threatened to take action to protect the regime’s interests “whether the talks produce an agreement or not”.
Seyyed-Afghahi said Israel is trying to provoke world public opinion against Iran by claiming that the country is after nuclear weapons, so that it can influence the Vienna talks.
“If an agreement is supposed to take shape, none of the countries [in the talks] will pay attention to [Israeli] nonsense,” he said.
Iranian firms unlock exclusive German software to raise natural gas production
“After repeated harvesting from a natural gas reservoir, the gas field needs to reduce pressure to enable greater extraction,” Managing Director of South Zagros Oil and Gas Production Company said.
“The compressor in this station was made by a German company and the firm refused to offer us services due to sanctions and even advised that any reduction in pressure could be dangerous,” Abolhassan Mohamamdi said.
He said this led the company to seek help from knowledge-based companies to recalibrate the compressor for greater extraction from the field.
Mohammadi said the knowledge-based companies managed to unlock the compressor’s software and re-design it to enable a reduction in pressure.
He said this enabled his company to increase its extraction of natural gas from the field by 30 percent to 20 million cubic meters a day.
Baku invites Iranian firms to take part in Karabakh reconstruction
“On the participation of Iranian companies in the restoration and reconstruction of Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s liberated areas, the necessary budget for the projects, whose documentation is ready, will be completed and handed to the Iranian representatives by the end of February,” Azerbaijan Republic’s First Deputy Prime Minsiter Shahin Mustafayev said.
He made the comment during a phone call with Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Rostam Ghassemi.
Mustafayev also called for cooperation with Iran in production of tractors, automobile parts and pharmaceuticals in the Azerbaijan Republic.
He invited Iranian industrial operators in the relevant fields to visit Baku for discussions ahead of the joint economic commission of Iran and the Azerbaijan Republic.
Ghassemi, for his part, called for speeding up the implementation process of the agreements he signed with Baku during his recent visit there.
“Seeing the will of the officials of Iran and the Azerbaijan Republic, special new relations in the fields of economy, energy, industry and other areas, which were discussed during the visit to Azerbaijan should take shape and be finalized in the joint commission,” he said.
Ghassemi added that Tehran is ready for cooperation with Baku to take part in the development of the Azerbaijan Republic’s industrial parks.
