“They say that Iran should not hold war games in the Persian Gulf. What a foolish remark!” Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said, seemingly in response to an April 28 resolution by the US Republican Representative Randy Forbes regarding Iranian naval actions in the Persian Gulf.
“What are you doing in the Persian Gulf? The Persian Gulf is our home,” the Leader told a group of teachers, according to the Leader’s website.
“They come here from the other side of the globe to stage military drills. What are you doing here? Go back to the Bay of Pigs and hold your exercises there,” Ayatollah Khamenei added.
The Leader seemed to be sarcastically alluding to the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by a CIA-sponsored paramilitary group in 1961.
A counter-revolutionary military force, trained and funded by the United States government’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro.
Launched from Guatemala, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, under the direct command of Prime Minister Fidel Castro.
In an open session of the parliament on Monday, the MPs approved the proposal to further reinforce the defence capabilities of the Islamic Republic, as a regional power.
According to the law, President Hassan Rouhani’s administration must allocate at least 5% of the public budget to projects aimed at bolstering the country’s defensive power.
Earlier this year, the head of the Iranian parliament’s defence committee stressed the need to boost the country’s defence budget.
“Currently, the country’s defence budget is meagre in comparison with some regional countries,” Esmail Kowsari told Tasnim in January, adding that it had to increase.
In recent years, Iran has made great achievements in enhancing its defence capabilities.
Tehran has always assured other nations, though, that its military might poses no threat to the regional countries, saying that the Islamic Republic’s defence doctrine is entirely based on deterrence.
President Park was accorded an official welcome in Tehran on Monday on the first day of her three-day visit, heading South Korea’s biggest-ever travelling business delegation of over 230 executives.
The two presidents then sat for their first meeting since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1962.
Later in a joint news conference, Rouhani called for peace on the Korean Peninsula, saying Iran is opposed to the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction of any kind.
He said Iran and South Korea are set to boost their trade volume from the current $6bn to $18bn as the two sides signed 19 cooperation agreements.
For her part, President Park called for further expansion of ties between Iran and South Korea in industrial, trade and cultural sectors.
South Korea has said it is eager to participate in Iran’s development projects and expand economic cooperation on communication technology, information, healthcare and culture.
South Korea has been a major importer of Iran’s crude oil. On Sunday, Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh said Iran’s oil exports to South Korea have more than quadrupled to 400,000 barrels a day since sanctions were lifted in January.
Iran, whose exports to South Korea were less than 100,000 barrels a day before sanctions were lifted, has since worked to boost its output quickly. It has focused on selling to its traditional customers in Asia, but has also shipped to Europe.
According to data from Energy Aspects, global imports of Iran’s crude rose in March to 1.90m bpd, from 1.51m bpd in February.
Zangeneh also said Iran and South Korea were working to resolve difficulties in transferring payments for the oil sales.
Iran’s president (L) reviews the guard of honor with his South Korean counterpart at Sa’adabad Palace in Tehran on May, 2, 2016. (Photo by President.ir )
World leaders have been visiting Tehran after the implementation of the nuclear agreement, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries in July 2015.
In a message on his Instagram account on Sunday, President Rouhani said Iran is open to foreign investment. “Our economy will not improve unless we are able to attract investment,” he said.
“Today, these conditions have been provided and the leaders who travel to Iran bring with them representatives of scores of important trading companies,” Rouhani added.
East Asian nations are scrambling to boost economic links with Tehran after the country reached a nuclear agreement last year. China’s President Xi Jinping visited Iran in January and Japan signed an investment treaty with Iran a month later.
According to a report published by ISNA and translated by IFP, ultrasound technology, despite being one of the world’s least dangerous forms of cancer treatment, has yet to be adopted in Iran.
“The method has still neither been brought to Iran or to other regional countries, but if we manage to adopt this special and strategic technology in Iran, we will no longer need surgical operations and chemotherapy for patients diagnosed with cancer,” Chabok said.
“This is an exceptional event for world medicine,” he noted, stressing that the method has been used to cure prostate and uterine cancers, and has worked.
“Even the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has confirmed it,” Chabok said.
“We no longer deal with MRI or medical ultrasound (ultrasonography), the traditional ways to diagnose the disease,” he explained.
“In the ultrasound method, there is no need for hospitalization and general anaesthesia, and we use a type of local anaesthesia. This is much more cost-effective for insurance companies,” he added.
In the treatment of prostate cancer, for instance, the disease is cured in two or three 3-hour sessions using mechanical waves, Chabok stressed, referring to the method as being similar to a massage for a human body.
“In the traditional method where radiation was used, the rays themselves were major sources of cancer, but this has been totally removed from the new method,” he added.
“Ultrasound waves are used in this new method on the patient’s skin to remove the tumour,” the Iranian scientist went on to say.
He further noted that the method can also be used for other types of cancer.
“Liver cancer can be treated using this method in 85% of cases, but traditional methods of chemotherapy cannot cure liver cancer at all,” he said, noting that other types of cancer can also be treated with a huge success rate using the new method.
Chabok stated that the invention received the prize for best invention in 2011 as it has increased the success rate of cancer treatment from 10-20% to more than 60%.
Azizollah Ramezani, the director for international affairs of the NIGC, made the remarks in an interview with Shana.
He mentioned the Iran-Oman undersea gas pipeline as another item included in the NIGC-KOGAS cooperation document.
The MoU signed between NIGC and KOGAS involves also other areas for cooperation including mini-liquefied natural gas (LNG), LNG and compressed natural gas (CNG) plants as well as Research and Development (R&D), the official added.
He said that there are good grounds for cooperation between NIGC and KOGAS for optimizing energy efficiency in gas pressure amplifying stations and refineries, as well as in other NIGC facilities.
Ramezani added that the signed MoU between Iranian and Korean gas companies prepared the ground for the formation of joint task forces as precondition to boost cooperation in new areas in the future.
The MoU between NIGC and KOGAS shall be effective for a period of one year and could be extended, he noted.
The Managing Director of NIGC, Hamidreza Araqi, and the President of KOGAS Seung-Hoon Lee signed a Memorandum of Understanding for boost of bilateral cooperation on Sunday.
Speaking at a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran on Sunday May 1, Octavino Alimudin hailed the close relations between the two Asian countries and their cultural and historical common ground, and stressed the need to further expand the ties.
“In our mission, we are seeking to develop relations in all spheres and increase reciprocal visits by high-ranking delegations,” he noted.
During the meeting, the Indonesian diplomat also submitted a copy of his credentials to the Iranian foreign minister.
Earlier in March, Zarif paid an official visit to Jakarta as the first destination of his tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania, which took him later to Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia.
During his visit to Indonesia, the Iranian top diplomat held separate meetings with senior officials of the East Asian country, including President Joko Widodo, on the sidelines of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit.
During the meeting, the two sides talked about the growing ties between Tehran and Jakarta as well as regional issues.
On Thursday, April 28, members of Elixir’s production team were filming the show’s seventh episode in a studio near Tehran’s Sorkheh Hessar Park.
However, the scream of a mother, whose 3-year-old child had seemingly drowned in a fountain outside the studio, alerted those filming inside, and delayed the recording of the episode.
Fortunately, the TV show’s guest Massoud Saberi, a prominent brain surgeon, was there to help the child. Without any hesitation, he resuscitated the child, saving its life.
An ambulance was called which transferred the child to hospital, who has recovered and is in a stable condition.
Farzad Hassani, the popular TV host of the program, is going to talk about the incident in his interview with the surgeon in this week’s episode. A video including the rescue of the child will be aired this Thursday.
Speaking to reporters at his weekly news conference, Hossein Jaberi Ansari said Iran urges all Iraqi sides to reach a political understanding through negotiation.
Respecting law and maintaining the political achievements of the past two decades can guarantee stability, and help with the continuation of development and national unity, said Jaberi Ansari.
He hoped that the groundwork would be laid to fight against terrorism and corruption in Iraq, referring these as two very important questions for the country.
Serious talks among all Iraqi groups and sides are needed to combat those problems, he said, expressing Iran’s readiness to use all its abilities in order to pave the way for Iraqi talks.
Speaking at a weekly press conference in Tehran, Hossein Jaberi Ansari said the committee, led by Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Ali Tayyebnia, will submit reports to the officials.
He also noted that the committee has reached a conclusion on a series of legal and political actions to restore the rights of the Iranian nation.
Slamming the US move as unlawful, the spokesman underlined that Washington is held accountable for “international robbery”.
Earlier in April, the US Supreme Court upheld the Congress and President’s actions to hold Iran financially responsible for the 1983 bombing that killed 241 Marines at their barracks in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
The ruling allows the families of the Marines and victims of other attacks that courts have linked to Iran to seize some $2 billion in assets held in New York’s Citibank, belonging to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which has been blocked under US sanctions.
While the US measure has drawn widespread condemnation from Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said last week that the Iranian committee is also tasked with preventing similar future cases of seizures of the country’s assets.
“There are ways to get that money back,” he explained, blaming the previous administration’s imprudence for the seizure.
President Hassan Rouhani has also described the move as “a blatant robbery”, saying his administration will spare no effort to get the money back.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, stressing that Tehran will take whatever action necessary for reimbursement.
