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5 more Gazans die of starvation under Israeli blockade, death toll rises to 193

By
IFP Media Wire
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Gaza

A ministry statement said that 96 children were among the victims.

Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza for 18 years and, since March 2, has shut down all crossings, blocking the entry of humanitarian aid and worsening conditions for the territory’s 2.4 million population.

According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israel had allowed in just 843 aid trucks since July 27 – far short of the 6,000 trucks required to meet the daily needs of residents over 10 days.

Israel has been facing mounting outrage over its destructive war on Gaza, where more than 61,000 people have been killed since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave and brought it to the verge of famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Detained British couple in Iran make first phone call to family after seven months

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Iran Prison

Lindsay and Craig Forman, both 52, were traveling around the world by motorcycle when they were detained by Iranian authorities in the southeastern city of Kerman. A month later, officials announced they were suspected of spying.

On Tuesday, the couple made brief phone calls from separate prisons in Tehran. Their families confirmed Lindsay is being held at Qarchak women’s prison, while Craig is in Tehran’s Fashafouyeh prison.

“We waited 213 days,” said Joe Bennett, Lindsay’s son. “We hoped, we held our breath, and today, we finally heard their voices. For a moment, the heavy weight of the past seven months lifted.”

The eight-minute call was described as emotional, filled with “laughter and tears.” Despite the relief, Bennett criticized the UK government for not clearly outlining a plan to secure their release, calling the ongoing silence “deeply concerning.”

Kieran Forman, Craig’s son, also described the call as “a huge relief” and said it gave him renewed hope amid ongoing uncertainty.

EU Parliament groups call on top officials to take action to end Gaza genocide

By
IFP Media Wire
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European Parliament

In a joint letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, they criticized the bloc’s continued inaction amid Israel’s ongoing attacks.

They urged the EU to back an immediate and permanent ceasefire, suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement and enforce a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.

The letter also called for targeted sanctions on Israeli officials, the reinstatement of full funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and a ban on trade in goods from illegal Israeli settlements.

“This situation can no longer be regarded as a mere emergency: there is clear evidence that a genocide is being committed in Gaza. The European Commission and the European Council have so far failed to respond with the urgency and resolve that our treaties, values and responsibilities demand,” the lawmakers said.

The signatories also cited growing settler violence in the West Bank and Israeli plans to permanently occupy Gaza, calling it a clear violation of international law.

The EU’s foreign service has acknowledged Israel’s breach of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, they noted, yet the pact remains active and no sanctions have been imposed.

“We cannot afford more delay. We cannot afford more bloodshed. History will not forgive silence in the face of mass suffering and impunity. The European Union must take responsibility and act now,” they added.

The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 61,000 Palestinians, almost half of them women and children.

Israel’s military campaign has devastated the enclave and brought it to the verge of famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Trump pledges to pull US out of Ukraine ‘mess’

By
IFP Media Wire
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Russia Ukraine War

When asked why the US should keep funding Ukraine as Kiev grows increasingly more coercive in its draft campaign, Trump responded: “This is Biden’s war. This is not my war. I’m here to get us out of it. It’s a mess, and I’m here to get us out.”

The journalist was referring to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent decree allowing the enlistment of men over 60.

”I haven’t heard that, when you say about 60-year-old men,” Trump said, adding, “But this is Biden’s war. And we’re working very hard to get us out.”

In recent weeks, the US president has threatened to impose 100% tariffs and secondary sanctions targeting Russia’s trading partners in an effort to pressure Moscow into accepting a ceasefire with Kiev – measures which Russia has denounced as illegal.

Asked whether he was prepared to follow through on his threats, Trump said a decision would be made after a scheduled meeting in Russia this week involving his special envoy, Steve Witkoff.

”I never said a percentage [for tariffs], but we’ll be doing quite a bit of that,” Trump stated.

“We have a meeting with Russia tomorrow [on Wednesday]… We’ll make that determination at that time.”

Earlier in the day, Trump said he will “substantially” raise tariffs on Indian imports over the next 24 hours, due to New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian crude. He had previously announced a 25% tariff on Indian goods, scheduled to take effect on Friday.

India, one the biggest importers of Russian oil alongside China, has promised to “safeguard its national interests and economic security” in response to the tariff threat.

Beijing responded by vowing to “defend its sovereignty” in response to what it described as “coercion and pressure.”

Moscow has condemned Trump’s tariff threats as violations of other nations’ rights.

“We believe that sovereign states should have, and do have, the right to choose their own trade partners,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

Nursing shortage forces hospital ward closures in Iran, officials warn

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Iran Hospital Surgery Doctor Nurse

At a press conference on Wednesday, the head of the Iranian Nursing Organization, Ahmad Nejatian, said the shortage is not due to a lack of trained nurses.

“We graduate 15,000 nurses annually, 2.5 times more than before, but still face major staffing gaps,” he said. “Increasing education capacity is not a solution.”

Nejatian stated that nurses are facing up to eight months of delayed payments for bonuses and overtime.

The financial burden and difficult working conditions, worsened by the recent 12-day war with Israel, have contributed to high attrition and increased requests for migration certificates, he added.

He also revealed that five nurses were killed during the conflict in June, with more casualties potentially unreported due to their involvement with military medical teams.

Despite improvements in back pay, Nejatian warned of systemic issues, adding, “If we continue delaying reforms like the family physician system, the health sector could face collapse.”

Iran’s fiber optic production plant launched in Venezuela

By
IFP Media Wire
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Iran’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Seyed Sattar Hashemi, said that in line with expanding technology diplomacy and exporting Iran’s technical capabilities to other countries, a fiber optic production facility has been launched and put into operation in Venezuela by Iranian knowledge-based companies.

The Iranian fiber optic plant in Venezuela was established with a $10 million investment. It aims to meet Venezuela’s domestic needs—which previously imported fiber optic equipment worth $2 million annually from Iran—and to become a regional hub for exporting telecommunications equipment to Latin American countries.

According to Amirhossein Mirabadi, head of the Center for International Interactions at the Vice-Presidency for Science, Technology, and Knowledge-Based Economy, with the inauguration of this plant, Iranian knowledge-based companies have established a presence in a region often described as the United States’ backyard.

Earlier, Iran and Oman had also agreed to establish a new corridor for data and internet transit—a route beginning in northern countries such as Russia and Central Asia, passing through Iran, and extending southward to the Persian Gulf, India, and even East Africa.

The purpose of this agreement is for Iran, leveraging its domestic infrastructure, to become one of the main data transit routes in the region. The initial capacity of this corridor is 4.5 terabits per second.

Iran says it cannot trust US after attack on nuclear facilities

By
IFP Media Wire
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Esmael baghaei

Speaking with Press TV, Baghaei said Washington colluded with Israel to violate Iran’s sovereignty and sabotage ongoing diplomatic efforts during the occupying regime’s 12-day war of aggression against Iran.

Israel launched a large-scale attack against Iran on June 13, assassinating many high-ranking military commanders, nuclear scientists, and ordinary civilians. More than a week later, the United States also entered the war by bombing three Iranian nuclear sites. The war came amid indirect talks between Tehran and Washington on the former’s nuclear program.

“There is no plan for any sort of negotiations with the US, but we have always repeated that Iran has never left the negotiating table,” Baghaei said.

He made clear that “If we come to the conclusion that through negotiations we can resolve an issue or we can take care of our national interests, we would not hesitate to do that.”

Baghaei added that negotiations should be purposeful and solution-oriented and should not deprive Iran of its inalienable rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iran and the United States had held five rounds of indirect talks on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program before the beginning of Israel’s acts of aggression.

Mediated by Oman, the 6th round of talks was planned to be held in the Omani capital of Muscat on June 15, but was called off due to the anti-Iran attacks.

It is ‘up to Israel’ whether to occupy all of Gaza: Trump

By
IFP Media Wire
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When asked on Tuesday about reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to occupy the entire Palestinian territory, Trump said he is focused on getting “people fed” in Gaza.

“As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” the US president told reporters.

Washington provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, assistance that significantly increased following the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.

Israel has used forced displacement orders to squeeze Palestinians into ever-shrinking pockets in Gaza, turning 86 percent of the territory into militarised zones.

But increased military operations in the remaining part of the territory would further endanger the lives of Palestinians, who already endure daily bombardment and Israeli-imposed starvation.

Netanyahu’s purported plans to conquer Gaza have also raises concerns about the safety of the remaining Israeli captives held in the enclave by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

Israel withdrew its forces and settlements from the Palestinian territory in 2005, but legal experts have said that the enclave remained technically under occupation, since the Israeli military continued to control Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters and ports of entry.

Since the start of the war in 2023, right-wing Israeli officials have called for the re-establishment of Israel’s military presence and settlements inside Gaza.

Netanyahu has also suggested that Israel aims to remove all Palestinians from the enclave, in what would amount to ethnic cleansing, a plan that Trump himself echoed in February.

Trump, at the time, proposed clearing Gaza of its people to construct a “riviera of the Middle East” in its stead.

The recent reports about Israel’s intention to expand its ground operations in Gaza come amid growing international outcry over the deadly hunger spreading across the territory.

Israel has blocked nearly all aid from entering Gaza since March, making US-backed GHF sites almost the only places for Palestinians to get food.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been shot by the Israeli military while trying to reach GHF facilities deep inside Israel’s lines of control. Nevertheless, the US has continued to support the organisation, despite international pleas to allow the UN to distribute the aid.

The Israeli military has also been accused of targeting aid seekers trying to reach assistance trucks away from GHF sites in northern Gaza.

On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his often-repeated claim that the US has provided $60m in aid to Gaza. His administration had provided $30m to GHF.

“As you know, $60m was given by the United States fairly recently to supply food – a lot of food, frankly – for the people of Gaza that are obviously not doing too well with the food,” he told reporters.

“And I know Israel is going to help us with that, in terms of distribution and also money. We also have the Arab states [which] are going to help us with that in terms of the money and possibly distribution.”

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 61,000 people and flattened most of the territory in what rights groups and UN experts have called a genocide.

US official says Trump to host Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders for peace negotiations

By
IFP Media Wire
-

The official stated on Tuesday that there is a possibility a framework for a peace agreement could be announced at Friday’s meeting in Washington, DC.

The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, for peace talks last month, but no breakthrough in the decades-old conflict was announced.

The two South Caucasus countries have been in conflict with each other since the late 1980s, when Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.

The region, which was claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, had a mostly ethnic Armenian population at the time.

Azerbaijan recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, prompting almost all of the territory’s 100,000 Armenians to flee to Armenia.

Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of “erasing all traces” of the presence of ethnic Armenians in the contested territory, in a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The case stems from the 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh, which left more than 6,600 people dead, one of three full-scale wars that the two countries have fought over the region.

The United Nations’s top court has ordered Azerbaijan to allow ethnic Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh to return. Azerbaijan says it is committed to ensuring all residents’ safety and security, regardless of national or ethnic origin, and that it has not forced ethnic Armenians, who are mostly Christian, to leave the Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan, whose inhabitants are mostly Muslim, links its historical identity to the territory, too, and has accused the Armenians of driving out Azeris who lived near the region in the 1990s.

The meeting in Abu Dhabi last month between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev came after the two countries finalised a draft peace deal in March.

The two leaders “agreed to continue bilateral negotiations and confidence-building measures between the two countries”, but no more concrete steps were outlined in the final statement from the talks.

Ceasefire violations along the heavily militarised 1,000km (620-mile) shared Armenia-Azerbaijan border surged soon after the draft deal was announced in March, but later diminished.

Iran executes two men for ties to Daesh, Mossad espionage

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Iran Prison

Mehdi Asgharzadeh was convicted of membership in the Daesh terrorist group.

Operating under aliases “Abu Khaled” and “Hesam,” he had received military and ideological training in Syria and Iraq and sustained injuries during combat in Syria, according to the judiciary.

Authorities said he later infiltrated Iran with a five-member terror cell intending to conduct attacks on religious sites using grenades, firearms, and suicide vests. The cell was dismantled before any attack could be carried out.

Asgharzadeh was found guilty of “corruption on earth” and sentenced to death, a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court.

The second individual, Rouzbeh Vadi, was executed for espionage on behalf of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

The judiciary said he met with Mossad officers five times in Austria and provided classified information, including intelligence related to a nuclear scientist who was recently killed in an Israeli strike.

Vadi, employed at a sensitive Iranian institution, was found guilty after trial.

Both executions were carried out following Supreme Court approval and legal proceedings, according to Iranian authorities.

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