Alireza Kazemi the acting Minister of Education gave the decree bestowing the medal on Ali Landi to his family on Tuesday.
The decree described Ali as a “martyr”. The 15-year-old died at a hospital in Isfahan several days ago. Officials at the hospital said severe infection caused by the burns rendered treatment efforts ineffective.
Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei offered condolences to Ali’s family over the teen boy’s death earlier this week.
The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Eslami said the US has no merits to make such a demand because it did not condemn the terrorist attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Eslami, who arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, added that Iran has voluntarily limited its nuclear activities under the nuclear deal known as the JCPOA, and lived up to its obligations unilaterally for more than two and a half years, but the other sides failed to fulfill their commitments.
“The United States did not fulfill its obligations and caused others not to fulfill them,” Eslami said.
In this regard, he added, Washington not only sanctioned Iran, but also sanctioned any company that wanted to do business with Tehran.
He stated that the Islamic Republic is bound by the law within the framework of the safeguards agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT.
Eslami noted that it is clear that Iran will not include sites that have been damaged by terrorist attacks, and “we have told the IAEA this both in the Tehran statement and in Vienna”. He referred to the agency’s insistence that Tehran allow inspections of the Karaj site near Tehran. Eslami said, “Iran has been a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency for 50 years, and this body must end its discriminatory and political behavior.”
The US has threatened diplomatic retaliation at the IAEA Board of Governors if Iran denies inspectors’ access to the centrifuge manufacturing site in Karaj. Iran says investigations are still underway at the site after it was hit by an act of sabotage in June. It says the facility is exempted under an agreement with the IAEA over servicing, monitoring and surveillance equipment at Iranian nuclear sites.
Wang expressed China’s willingness to continue dialogue with NATO on the basis of equality and mutual respect to promote the sound and steady development of relationship.
Wang said the key to promoting ties lies in adopting correct perceptions towards each other.
There is no need for the Asia-Pacific region to establish any new military bloc, neither should there be confrontation instigated among major countries or any “small circle” be formed aimed at inciting a new Cold War, he added.
Wang stated NATO should stay committed to its original geographical location, and play a constructive role in regional peace, stability and development.
Noting that NATO does not view China as a rival, Stoltenberg noted the organization is willing to develop a constructive relationship with China based on mutual respect with no preconditions attached.
The two sides also exchanged views on the situation in Afghanistan.
Both parties deemed the virtual meeting positive and constructive, pledging to continue communications, improve the quality of dialogue and advance pragmatic cooperation.
During the meeting with Guterres, Wang said China has always attached great importance to its cooperation with the UN and the country has been a staunch supporter and contributor to the UN’s cause over the past 50 years.
“We will continue to firmly uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, the international system with the UN at its core, and support the UN in playing its due role in international affairs,” he added.
Noting the changes and uncertainty the world is facing, Wang said China firmly opposes any words and deeds that create divisions and advocate the Cold War, and will make new contributions to the cause of peace and development of humankind.
Wang added China welcomes the active participation of all parties into the Global Development Initiative to form international consensus and take common actions.
Guterres hailed China’s long-term firm support for multilateralism and the UN’s core position.
He noted the UN is ready to work closely with China to uphold and practice multilateralism, advocate international relations based on mutual respect, and jointly tackle global challenges, especially to promote the international community to provide greater support and assistance to developing countries in recovering from COVID-19 and tackling climate change.
The two sides also exchanged views on China-U.S. relations.
The U.S. side recently indicated that it does not want confrontation or Cold War and expressed hopes that bilateral relations will return to the right track, Wang said. He pointed out that the key is to put the words into concrete action and bring its China policy back to a rational and pragmatic track.
China is opposed to the Quad security dialogue because it creates “discord” among countries of the Asia-Pacific region, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson has announced.
Speaking to reporters Monday and commenting on the meeting of Quad leaders hosted by US President Joe Biden on Friday, spokesewoman Hua Chunying accused ‘some states’ of exaggerating the danger supposedly posed by China.
“We drew attention to the quadripartite dialogue between Australia, India, the United States and Japan at the highest level, and are strongly opposed to these individual countries causing discord in China’s relations with the states of the region,” Hua said, speaking to reporters.
At Friday’s meeting, Biden told reporters that the Quad represents four “democratic partners who share a world view and have a common vision for the future”.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described that vision as encompassing “a region that we wish to be always free from coercion, where the sovereign rights of all nations are respected and where disputes are settled peacefully and [in] accordance with international law”.
Chinese media slammed the meeting, with an editorial in the Global Times warning that if the three countries following the US strategy of “containing China” “go too far”, they “will become cannon fodder as China will resolutely safeguard its interests”.
For his part, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian noted that any “closed” and “exclusive clique” of nations targeting other countries in Asia would be “doomed to fail”, and stressed that Beijing was interested in “solidarity and cooperation”, not conflict, among regional countries.
Last week, speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reiterated that China would “never invade or bully others, or seek hegemony”, and called for other countries to join China in promoting “win-win cooperation in conducting international relations” instead of “forming small circles” or thinking in terms of “zero-sum games”.
The Quad is one of over half-a-dozen bilateral and regional alliances formed by the United States to take on and try to hem in China. Earlier this month, Washington’s relations with its French allies took a hit after the US, the UK and Australia secretly created yet another security pact known as AUKUS without informing anyone.
The status of Taiwan and the South China Sea are two of the major hotspots driving tensions between Beijing on one side and the US and its allies on the other. The People’s Republic has repeatedly slammed Washington over its meddling in Taiwanese affairs, and considers the island an integral part of China destined for eventual peaceful reunification.
In the South China Sea, China lays claim to wide swathes of the strategic and resource-rich maritime territory, with other countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines contesting these claims. The US, which is not a party to the territorial dispute, has nevertheless expressed its support to claimants other than China, and regularly sails warships through the region. Beijing, which established a regional dialogue for settling the territorial disputes in the early 2000s, has asked the US to mind its own business and to keep its fleet out of Chinese waters.
China has castigated the construction of nuclear submarines by non-nuclear weapon states as a violation of the non-proliferation regime, China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun told a session of the UN Security Council on Monday.
“China objects to [the] utilitarian approach to the non-proliferation treaty or the application of the double standards there to. <…> assisting non-nuclear weapons states in building nuclear submarines not only will intensify the arms race to the detriment of international non-proliferation regime as well as international and regional security and stability,” China’s permanent representative said.
“It also runs counter to the spirit of the NPT,” the diplomat stressed. The Chinese government “has scrupulously upheld the moratorium and has never waived in its support for [the] Treaty at the political level,” the ambassador added.
That’s according to Iran’s Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicraft, Seyyed Ezatollah Zarghami.
He wrote on Twitter, “I thank the president for his wise and supportive stance towards the tourism industry at the government meeting and the order to expedite the issuance of tourist visas. Yesterday, the proposed governors all presented a program on tourism. This is very good.”
Meanwhile, the National Corona Management Headquarters has issued a directive that says tourist visas for travelers across international borders are permissible within the framework of the Passenger Traffic Guidelines of the Foreign Ministry. The decree emphasizes that direct and indirect entry of Iranians and foreign nationals from/to land borders and also air borders by presenting a vaccine card, negative PCR test and observing the protocols and instructions approved by the Ministry of Health is allowable from the first of October this year. Iran stopped issuing tourist visas in April 2016 due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus and the suspension of most international flights and the closure of land borders following the approval of the National Corona Headquarters, but medical, business and study visas were issued non-stop.
Trump on Monday seized on the Homeland Security secretary’s admission that more than 12,000 Haitian migrants had been released into the US and the Biden administration’s bungled military withdrawal from Afghanistan to say “we are a Nation humiliated like never before”.
”All 17,000 illegal immigrants who entered our Country from Haiti and other places unknown have now been released into our Country with no vetting, checking, or even minimal understanding of who they are,” Trump said in a statement released in an email.
“Some are very sick with extremely contagious diseases, even worse than the China Virus. They are not masked or mandated, but just let free to roam all over our Country and affect what was just a year ago, a great Nation,” he continued.
“Now we are a Nation humiliated like never before, both with the historically embarrassing ’withdrawal’ from Afghanistan, and our Border where millions of people are pouring in. Our Country is being destroyed!,” the 45th commander in chief added.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted on Sunday that more than 12,000 Haitians who had been living in a makeshift encampment under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, have been released into the US.
He told “Fox News Sunday” that 12,400 migrants were having their asylum claims heard by an immigration judge while roughly another 5,000 are being processed by DHS.
Mayorkas said the number could exceed 5,000 as other cases are processed.
“It could be even higher. The number that are returned could be even higher. What we do is we follow the law as Congress has passed it,” he added.
Many of the migrants being released into the US may have coronavirus because the Biden administration is not requiring them to be tested or be vaccinated after they enter the US illegally.
The migrants being freed are given orders to report to an immigration judge in 60 days, but Fox News’ Chris Wallace pointed out that the Justice Department estimates that 44 percent of those released will miss their appearances.
“We have enforcement guidelines in place that provide the individuals who are recent border crossers who do not show up for their hearings are enforcement priorities and will be removed,” Mayorkas responded.
Crowds of migrants from South America arrived in Texas earlier this month seeking asylum, but the numbers soon swelled into the thousands, leaving the Biden administration scrambling to respond to the humanitarian crisis.
The US also deported about 2,000 of the migrants back to Haiti, and another 8,000 returned to Mexico voluntarily.
The camp was finally cleared out last Friday.
The Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of last month turned into a debacle as crowds of Afghans streamed to the Kabul airport to escape and hundreds of American citizens were left behind.
A Daesh suicide bomber took advantage of the chaos to kill 13 US service members.
The works by Mahshid Darabi are on display on the sidelines of the Iranian book and literature stall at Moscow International Book Fair.
Darabi, who has illustrated several Iranian books, is presenting her work as part of a training workshop at the Iran stall.
“There is exceptional interest in Iranian poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam in Russia and the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is also loved in Iran,” she said.
“I tried to create an imaginary space with the aim of cultural interaction between the two neighboring countries. For this purpose, I painted each of these individuals while they are reading each others’ books.”
She explained that, in her work, Khayyam is reading the Brothers Karamazov and Dostoevsky is reading a translation of the Iranian poet’s Rubaiyat in Russian.
Darabi added that they are placed against a background of Iranian and Russian architecture as well as ships passing between the two countries in the Caspian Sea.
Also in the foreground, Darabi has painted herself doing the painting and a woman, wearing Russian traditional clothes, serving tea to the guests.
Darabi has an M.A. in illustration from Tehran University of Art and frequently uses acrylic techniques for her paintings.
Mekdad has lashed out at the United States and Turkey for occupying territories in the Arab country, calling on Washington and Ankara to withdraw their forces and stop “plundering” the country’s wealth.
He said Syria’s campaign against terrorism will continue until the entire Syrian territories are purged of the menace, emphasizing no external aggression or pressure will deter it.
“History will record the fact that the Syrian nation not only defended their homeland and civilization in their struggle against terrorism, but also the whole international community,” the senior Syrian diplomat added.
Mikdad noted that the Damascus government is working to end the foreign occupation of its territories by all means guaranteed in international law.
The Syrian foreign minister also condemned oppressive economic sanctions imposed against his country and other states like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Yemen, stating that the bans negatively impact human rights, kill people and deprive them of their basic rights to health, food and life.
“It is no secret to anyone that Syria was among the countries most affected by terrorist attacks sponsored militarily, financially, and logistically by states known for their support of terror. Acts of terrorism have resulted in the murder of innocent people, insecurity, destruction of essential infrastructure, plunder of national resources and caused humanitarian crises in a country that was proud of its achievements. Syria recorded economic growth of more than 9.5 percent in the year 2010 prior to the outbreak of the crisis.
“Thanks to the sacrifices and heroism of our people and armed forces, and assistance of our friends and allies, we have scored exceptional gains in the campaign to confront and eliminate terrorism,” Mikdad continued.
He went on to say that the Turkish government continues to support terrorism in Idlib, turning the northwestern Syrian province into a sanctuary for foreign terrorists.
Mikdad pointed out that various war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as forced displacement, assaults on locals, and collective punishment of people by deliberately and repeatedly cutting off water to more than a million citizens of Hasakah city, have been committed by Turkish troops and their allied militants.
He lambasted the deployment of foreign troops on Syrian soil without the consent of the Damascus government as illegal and a gross violation of the international law, the Charter of the United Nations and all Security Council resolutions that demand respect for Syria’s sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity.
“Therefore, the occupation of Syrian territories by Turkish and American forces under false pretexts, and their theft of Syrians’ wealth must end immediately and unconditionally. Syria will work determinedly and persistently to end such occupation, and will utilize all means guaranteed in the international law to this end,” Mikdad noted.
The US military has stationed forces and equipment in eastern and northeastern Syria, with the Pentagon claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the area from falling into the hands of Daesh terrorists.
Damascus, however, says the unlawful deployment is meant to plunder the country’s resources.
Former US president Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in Syria for its oil.
After failing to oust the Syrian government through proxies and direct involvement in the conflict, the US government has now stepped up its economic war on the Arab country.
This comes as Turkey has also deployed forces in Syria in violation of the Arab country’s territorial integrity.
Ankara-backed militants were deployed to northeastern Syria in October 2019 after Turkish military forces launched a long-threatened cross-border invasion in a declared attempt to push fighters of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) away from border areas.
Ankara views the US-backed YPG as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey since 1984.
The Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria says the Turkish offensive has killed hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children since it started.
Turkey has played a major role in supporting terrorists in Syria ever since a major foreign-backed insurgency overtook the country more than ten years ago.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials have said the Damascus government will respond through all legitimate means available to the ongoing ground offensive by Turkish forces and allied Takfiri militants in the northern part of the war-battered Arab country.
Saeed Khatibzadeh said Ilham Aliyev’s remarks are surprising because they come at a time when Tehran and Baku have good relations based on mutual respect and there are normal channels through which the two sides can talk at the highest level.
Khatibzadeh added that the Iranian and Azeri foreign ministers also engaged in serious and meticulous discussions over the same issue and related matters on the sidelines of the UN recent General Assembly in New York. According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, the top diplomats agreed to continue the talks.
Khatibzadeh reiterated that Iran has always opposed any occupation of territory and stressed the need for respecting the territorial integrity of countries and internationally recognized borders. He said good neighborliness is a key matter and all neighbors are expected to observe it.
He added that the recent Iranian military drills along the northwestern border was a sovereign issue and was aimed at protecting regional security. He however said that Iran will not tolerate the Israeli regime’s presence near its borders even if it’s ceremonial and the Islamic Republic will do anything that it takes to protect its national security.
On Monday, Tarek Bitar was forced to suspend the probe after ex-Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, one of multiple officials under investigation, filed a complaint against him last week.
The court will decide whether Bitar will continue his investigation into the port blast that killed more than 200 people, wounded around 7,500, and caused widespread devastation in the capital on August 4, 2020. It was later revealed that the blast detonated at a warehouse storing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive substance, which sat there for around six years before the disaster.
If the judiciary removes the top judge, Bitar will become the second investigator to be dismissed since the launch of the inquiry. His predecessor, Fadi Sawan, was removed in February after ex-ministers accused of negligence complained that he was acting out of his jurisdiction.
Last month, Bitar issued the ex-caretaker prime minister, Hassan Diab, a subpoena after he failed to turn up to his inquiry. However, the secretary general of Lebanon’s parliament told the judge that his order was an excessive use of power.
The blast also caused significant political instability in Lebanon, with Diab resigning from his PM role amid major protests in the days after the explosion. Lebanon has only just announced a new government, headed by Prime Minister Najib Mikati, which put an end to 13 months of political deadlock.
On the blast’s anniversary, masses marched through Beirut to commemorate the tragedy. Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters descended on the streets and burned barricades outside of the Lebanese parliament to demonstrate against the injustice of no senior politicians having yet been held accountable for the disaster.
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