According to a Farsi report by IRNA, Ali Kermanshah, the deputy governor of Central Bank of Iran (CBI), announced that the CBI has been for the past six months considering the proposals made by international companies to connect Iranian debit cards to world banks.
Those who have Iranian debit cards will be able to use them in other countries as of the beginning of next Iranian calendar year [due to start in mid-March 2017], he noted.
According to a report by IFP, the US Department of State released a statement announcing the $25 million dollar reward for the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — more than doubling the reward announced previously.
“The threat that al-Baghdadi poses has increased significantly since the Department of State’s initial $10 million reward offer for information leading to his location, arrest, or conviction was announced in 2011,” the department’s Rewards for Justice Program said on its website.
Under al-Baghdadi, ISIS grabbed swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria — earning a reputation for unparalleled brutality, CNN reported.
Later on Friday, Al Alam quoted Iraqi Major General Fadhil Jalil Barwari as saying that al-Baghdadi is currently hiding underground near the city of Mosul in northern Iraq.
He added that al-Baghdadi was detained ten years ago, and Iraqi forces “have enough information about him to track him.”
“We believe he is now in Biaj, west of Mosul, hiding in an underground bunker. He changes his location all the time, and he also changes his appearance,” the commander of Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service told Niqash portal.
In November, the Iraqi armed forces press service said that al-Baghdadi fled Mosul amid the Iraqi troops’ military operation to retake the northern city.
According to a report by IFP, General Salar Abnoush, a deputy commander of IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Base, hailed the scientific potentials of the Islamic Iran, saying the forces of Khatam al-Anbiya Base are now busy serving in all industries.
“For instance, we are busy with several giant projects in the water domain, a strategic area as it is, so as to face less crises in the future… you will be hearing of such a big achievement in the future.”
He asserted, “We have reached the point that your children are today busy filling up the gap and repairing cracks in Mosul dam to prevent full inundation of the Iraqi cities of Samarra, Mosul and Kadhimiya.”
“This is while, all major dam building experts worldwide are unanimously admitting that the engineers of Khatam al-Anbiya are the only ones who have the solution in their hands,” he went on to say.
Syrian President Was the Only One Who Equipped Iran with Arms in War with Iraq
While referring to the victory of the resistance front in Aleppo, Abnoush said, “Those who used to ask why our youth should fight in Syria and Syria is not of our business, should know that in the beginning days of the Iraqi imposed war on Iran, Iranian forces were not even equipped with ordinary weaponry and that it was Hafiz al-Assad [the then Syrian president] who provided us with arms.”
According to a Farsi report by Mizan, General Abnoush further said Iran has not been the initiator of any war ever.
“We have announced times and again that we are seeking peace and will not wage any wars by no means, but in case a war breaks out, they, those who have begun it, will not be the ones who will end it; we will… by our own equations!”
“Enemies have well understood our power and due to the same reason they wish to weaken us,” he noted.
In a message to Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou released on Monday morning, President Rouhani felicitated the Republic Day in the African country and expressed the hope that the two countries would further boost cooperation in all spheres.
He further wished health and success for the Niger president and glory and welfare for the people of the country.
Republic Day, a national holiday in the Republic of Niger is commemorated on December 18, 1958.
Although not the date of formal, complete independence from France, December 18 marks the founding of the Republic and creation of the Presidency of the Republic of Niger, following the constitutional changes of the French Fifth Republic, and the elections of December 4, 1958 held across the French colonial possessions.
According to Tasnim dispatches, a group of 500 civilians from Kefraya and Foua entered Ramouseh District, located south of Aleppo, on Monday as part of a deal between Damascus and Takfiri militants.
More buses are expected to arrive in the area.
Simultaneously, a group of 382 militants and their family members left the eastern part of Syrian city of Aleppo late on Sunday. They will go to militant-held parts of the countryside.
Reports on Sunday said the Syrian government had demanded the evacuation of over a thousand residents from the besieged towns of Foua and Kafarya in exchange for evacuating the militants still in Aleppo.
Foua and Kafarya are the only government-held enclave in Idlib’s vast militant-held area. The towns of some 20,000 people have been under siege since 2013. The humanitarian situation remains dire, with a lack of food and basic necessities.
Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu, and Turkey’s Minister of National Defense Fikri Işık are scheduled to meet in Moscow tomorrow for talks on the latest developments in Syria, particularly after liberation of the city of Aleppo from terrorist groups.
Reports of the upcoming ministerial meeting came after plans for a trilateral meeting among Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov and Turkey’s Mevlut Cavusoglu in Russia on the same day.
Meeting of the foreign minister was initially slated for December 27, but Iran and Russia decided to convene it a week earlier, considering the rapid pace of developments in Syria.
The Syrian army took nearly all remaining terrorist-held parts of Aleppo last week after a four-year battle. Hundreds of foreign-backed terrorists have surrendered in Aleppo in recent days.
However, the evacuation of people from Aleppo has been hampered as the terrorist groups violated an agreement with the Syrian government by trying to take hostages with them.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh (ISIL), controlling parts of it.
“A group of mercenaries are abusing Western media reports to incite ignorant people to stage protests outside Iran’s embassies [across the world], and thus provoke people in Iran to reciprocate by holding protest rallies in front of foreign embassies in Tehran,” wrote Hamid Baeidinejad, the Iranian ambassador to Britain, in his Telegram channel.
According to a report by IFP, he went on to say that during the past days, some Western media in inaccurate reports tried to accuse Iran of preventing dissidents and their families from leaving Aleppo.
“According to reliable information, the MKO (Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization) terrorist group has a key role in these incitements.”
The MKO group pretends to be supporting the people of Syria’s Aleppo in its seemingly humanitarian activities, but it is actually pursuing a different purpose.
“Let’s be vigilant!” he added.
According to a Farsi report by IRNA, Al Arabiya TV Channel, which is affiliated with the House of Saud, recently claimed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has invited certain members of Afghanistan’s Taliban to attend the Islamic Unity Conference recently held in Tehran.
In reaction to the allegations, Taliban said in a statement that the reports are incorrect, and members of Taliban have not received any invitation from Tehran.
Iran’s Ambassador to Kabul and the Secretary of the conference also denied the report in separate reactions.
Manouchehr Mottaki, a former Iranian foreign minister and the scientific secretary of 30th Islamic Unity Conference, said Taliban has not been invited to the conference, and none of its members attended the gathering.
In its Farsi report, Mehr quoted Mottaki as saying that Taliban members were not among the guests of this edition of conference, but in previous editions, there were Pakistani clerics who allegedly supported the militant group.
However, he added, this does not mean that Taliban was attending the conference.
The 30th edition of Islamic Unity Conference was kicked off on Thursday by President Hasan Rouhani in Tehran with religious thinkers and elites from more than 50 countries across the world attending the three-day event.
“Iran has been committed to its obligations and this is an important matter,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s Director General Yukiya Amano said on Sunday at a joint press conference with Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).
The nuclear accord, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries — the US, Britain, Russia, France and China plus Germany — last year in Vienna.
The IAEA is tasked with monitoring the technical implementation of the nuclear deal.
Since January, when the JCPOA took effect, the agency has confirmed Iran’s compliance in several reports.
“We are satisfied with the trend of the JCPOA’s implementation, and hope for this trend to continue,” added Amano, who is in Tehran on a one-day visit at the invitation of Salehi.
Concerning his meeting with Salehi, he said the two had discussed a range of issues, including heavywater, enriched uranium, Iran’s uranium stockpiles as well as research and development in the field of nuclear energy.
According to a report by IFP, Iran has reduced its order with Airbus to 100 planes in a contract that will no longer include A380s, Farhad Parvaresh, Iran Air’s chief executive officer, said in a press conference in Tehran.
This will shrink the original $27 billion deal for 118 jets, including 12 A380s. A team from Airbus is currently in Tehran for talks, Bloomberg reported.
“Given there are now 100 planes in the contract, I don’t think that the overall value will exceed $10 billion, and that’s at the very most,” Parvaresh said. “The A330 was part of the deal from before and it still is, but there will be no A380.”
Airbus has already cut production of its superjumbo by more than half, to one plane a month by 2018, as demand has dwindled. Dubai-based Emirates is the only carrier to give the giant aircraft a major role in its fleet.
Iran, which is updating its aging fleet after US sanctions were eased, is one of the few remaining untapped markets in which the plane-maker and rival Boeing Co. are competing for orders.
Iran is prepared to fund the first $1 billion tranche for the planes in Airbus and Boeing contracts, said Asghar Fakhrieh-Kashan, the country’s deputy transport minister for aviation.
Half of this will come from foreign financing, primarily through a leasing company. The remaining half will be raised via various sources, including $330 million from Iran’s sovereign wealth fund called the National Development Fund and $120 million from a domestic sukuk issuance.
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