Ali Mohammad Naeini said the reports are false.
The pager blasts mostly targeted Hezbollah members and ordinary Lebanese citizens.
The New York Times says Israel hid explosives in the pagers before they were imported to Lebanon.
The explosives were implanted next to the battery with a switch that could be triggered remotely to detonate.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against the Israeli regime.
The pager blasts killed 12 people and wounded thousands of others.
Brussels is making changes to its regulations in an attempt to convince Washington to contribute to its $50 billion loan to Ukraine, Politico reported in an article. It is planned that the funding would be repaid using the interest earned on around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets which were frozen by the West after the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. Most of the blocked funds are being held in the EU. The US has reportedly been worried that the bloc’s current sixth-month sanction renewal period makes the loan too risky.
According to Politico, the European Commission proposed three ideas on how to amend the EU’s sanctions rules in order to alleviate Washington’s concerns on Friday.
The first one is renewing the freeze on Russian assets every 36 months in a unanimous decision by the bloc’s 27 members. Two EU diplomats told the outlet that this option is “favored” by most EU countries.
The second idea is to block access to Moscow’s money for another five years, with a review every 12 months. In this case, prolonging the curbs would require the backing of the majority of the member-states, instead of a unanimous vote. This would make it difficult for a single country to unblock the Russian assets, Politico added. The outlet claimed that Hungary would be the “prime suspect” in this manner, as it has long been critical of EU sanctions policy.
The last option is to extend the renewal period for all EU sanctions to three years. However, it is seen as “the most unlikely”, the report read.
In late August, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the bloc has made its first transfer of €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in interest earned on Russia’s frozen central bank assets to Ukraine and other states which are aiding Kiev amid the conflict.
Commenting on Borrell’s announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the actions by Brussels as “theft” and “illegal expropriation,” warning that they would have “legal consequences”.
Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the seizure of its funds would be against the law and would further undermine global trust in the Western financial system. Russia also warned that if necessary, it would respond in kind if such a move were launched by the US and EU.
President Pezeshkian, during the cabinet session on Wednesday, referred to the deadly pager blasts across Lebanon on Tuesday, adding the fact that tools designed for the people’s welfare are being used for terrorist intentions, proves the savage nature of those behind the incident.
At least 12 people including two children were killed and more than 3,000 more injured in the attacks. Iran and the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah blame the Israeli regime for the terror incident, with the latter vowing a crushing response.
The Iranian president added the incident once again proved that the Western states including the US that claim support for a ceasefire in Gaza, are in practice supporting the Zionist regime’s crimes and blind onslaughts.
President Pezeshkian added the only way out is unity among Muslim nations in the face of the crimes committed by the Israeli regime and its supporters against Palestinians.
In the meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araqchi presented a report on the Zionist regime’s recent crime, adding a group of Iranian specialists and nurses left Tehran for Beirut to help the affected people in Lebanon.
About 3,000 people, including civilians, are reported to have been injured by the wave of blasts that struck Lebanon on Tuesday.
Approximately 300 people remain critically wounded, the minister stated. He added hospital staff performed 460 operations, mostly on eyes and faces, with many also treating injuries to hands.
While there has been no official claim of responsibility, the attack, which appears to have been chiefly aimed at Hezbollah operatives, has been widely attributed to Israel.
Lebanon’s minister of information has said the country is preparing to take a complaint to the UN security council over the mass detonation of pagers.
Lebanon’s state national news agency reports that Ziad Makary described the explosions as “a blatant attack on the Lebanese sovereignty, that targeted civilians, not only Hezbollah members”.
“What we fear is not Hezbollah, but Israel’s criminality, whether in Gaza or Lebanon. Lebanon is preparing a complaint to submit to the UN security council, and the ambassadors of certain states concerned with this never-ending conflict between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy will be summoned.”
“The enemy does not care about anybody, not even about the constant and public US pressures. US diplomacy must intensify its pressures on Israel before it does on Hezbollah and Lebanon,” the minister added.
In a statement, the army said three of the slain soldiers, including a deputy company commander, were part of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion. The fourth was a female soldier serving in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion.
The statement also noted that five soldiers were wounded, with three in critical condition, during the clashes on Tuesday.
Separately, the army reported that another soldier was seriously injured by rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire in Rafah on Tuesday.
At least 713 soldiers have been killed since the outbreak of the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel has continued its brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip following an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last Oct. 7, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.
More than 41,200 people, mostly women and children, have since been killed and over 95,400 injured, according to local health authorities.
The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine. Israel faces accusations of genocide for its actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.
The statement from Iran’s embassy in Lebanon came after the New York Times reported that Amani had lost one eye and is severely injured in the other following yesterday’s pager explosions.
“The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Lebanon informs our dear compatriots and the media that the treatment process of Mr. Amani, the esteemed ambassador, is progressing well and that the rumors about Mr. Amani’s physical condition and vision are false,” the diplomatic mission wrote on X on Wednesday.
Hundreds of pagers blew up at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday in an apparently coordinated attack that killed at least nine people and injured more than 2,800, according to the health minister.
Firass Abiad said more than 200 people are in critical condition after the communication devices exploded on Tuesday.
He added more than 150 hospitals are treating the victims, with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands and stomach.
Amani was among the wounded. On Tuesday, his wife took to X to confirm the envoy’s injury but said his condition was stable. The ambassador has a superficial injury and is currently under observation in the hospital. Two employees of the Iranian embassy were also injured.
The New York Times has reported that Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah.
Multiple images from Lebanon shared on social media appear to show damaged Gold Apollo pagers.
But Gold Apollo founder and chairperson Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters on Wednesday that his firm had signed a contract with a European distributor to use the Gold Apollo brand.
Hsu added the distributor, which he later named as BAC in a company statement, established a relationship with Gold Apollo about three years ago.
At first, the European company only imported Gold Apollo’s other pager and communication products, he said. Later, the company told Gold Apollo they wanted to make their own pagers and asked for the right to use the Taiwanese company’s brand, he said.
Hsu said Gold Apollo had encountered at least one anomaly in its dealings with the distributor, citing a wire transfer that took a long time to clear.
Taiwan has no record of Gold Apollo pagers being shipped to Lebanon or the Middle East, a senior Taiwanese security official told CNN on Wednesday.
Gold Apollo shipped about 260,000 pagers from Taiwan, mostly to the United States and Australia, the official told CNN.
A number of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah as well as civilians were killed and thousands more wounded after wireless communication devices, known as pagers, exploded in different locations across the country on Tuesday.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least nine people were killed and 2,800 others wounded in the explosions that were first reported in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Most of the injuries from Tuesday’s pager explosions in Lebanon have been to the face and hands, the ministry added.
The Reuters news agency, citing informed sources, reported that Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah before the detonations on Tuesday.
The sources told Reuters that the plot appears to have been many months in the making. The beepers were brought into the country earlier this year.
Reuters quoted a senior Lebanese source as saying that the devices had been modified by Israel’s spy service “at the production level”.
“The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner,” the source noted.
They added that 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.
Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone “undetected” by Hezbollah for months.
A total of 986 were named in a new report published by the ministry, while personal data for the remaining 165 was still being verified.
The delay in the verification process was due to Israeli authorities withholding the victims’ bodies or their remains being buried under rubble.
At least 165 of those killed were doctors, 260 nurses, 300 management and support personnel, 184 health associate professionals, 76 pharmacists and 12 other health workers.
“The Palestinian sector has been subjected to a systematic attack by the occupation forces that has affected all its components,” the ministry said.
Health facilities were the target of direct and repeated Israeli raids and air strikes, it added, which has crippled the health system and left hundreds of thousands of war victims facing “imminent death”.
Health workers have been arrested, brutally interrogated and assassinated, it added.
“The data included in this report… reflects the effects of the systematic and deliberate Israeli aggression against the health sector.”
The Israeli military has been accused of deliberately destroying Gaza’s health system through constant attacks on hospitals, ambulances and doctors, including by air strikes, detentions and denial of medical equipment, since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel.
In June, it was revealed that Dr Iyad Rantisi, who was the director of Kamal Adwan hospital’s maternity department, died “under torture” in Israeli custody after he was detained by invading troops from Gaza in November.
He was the second Palestinian physician from the Gaza Strip to die from torture in Israeli detention since the beginning of the war, after prominent surgeon and professor of orthopaedic medicine Dr Adnan al-Bursh was killed in Israeli detention in April.
More than 300 health workers were detained by Israeli forces during the assault.
Former prisoners say doctors are singled out for cruel treatment by Israeli forces in detention, where torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners is widespread and systematic.
The Tuesday report comes a day after the health ministry published the names of 34,344 people who were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces up to 31 August.
The Palestinian health ministry has recorded more than 41,200 Palestinian deaths in total as a result of Israeli attacks since the war began, but the process to collect data for nearly 7,000 more people has not yet been completed.
The Monday list included the names of 11,355 children out of 16,700 estimated by officials to have been killed.
Among them were 710 babies aged zero on the list, meaning they were under the age of one when they were killed.
The majority of them were born and killed during the war.
Since the early days of the war, international bodies and human rights groups repeatedly raised alarm over the high death toll among Palestinian civilians, especially children, doctors, journalists, aid workers and others.
The death toll among each of those categories is one of the highest in modern conflicts.
At least 220 UN aid workers were killed in Israeli air strikes, the highest staff death toll in UN history.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also said the death toll among media workers in Gaza is the highest since they began recording data in 1992, with over 170 journalists killed according to the Gaza-based government media office.
In an interview with IRNA news agency on Wednesday, Gholamreza Tajgardoon said he believes that the accession to the Paris-based Western-dominated watchdog can facilitate Iran’s international trade, which is currently on life support amid harsh sanctions.
“Our joining the FATF will make our banking transactions easier, and as a result, our businessmen will experience better conditions in this regard,” he said.
Iran’s relationship with the FATF has been complex and politically sensitive due to internal and external pressures.
Rightist politicians in Iran believe that adopting FATF standards, that “develop policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing,” will hand over a considerable part of the country’s financial system to the West.
Pezeshkian, who won the presidential office on a reformist platform, stressed in his first press conference on Monday that Iran has no choice but to join the task force.
“I will definitely write a letter to the Expediency Council to raise the issue of the FATF again so that we can solve it and it must be solved,” he told domestic and foreign reporters.
The Iranian president is scheduled to leave Tehran for New York on Sunday to take part in the 79th session of the UNGA and will deliver his speech in the assembly on Tuesday.
During a meeting with lawmakers at the Iranian parliament on Wednesday, President Pezeshkian asserted that Iran is not a warmonger nation and condemned the West for painting a dark image of the country.
“In the past 200 years, you have not seen Iran invade a country even once in history, but they have shown an unfair image of us,” he regretted.
He also slammed the West for providing the Israeli regime with state-of-the-art weapons systems, while blocking other countries’ access to defense systems.
The Iranian president stated, “They have imposed all kinds of problems on us. They created the Zionist regime in the region and armed it to the teeth, and then they tell us that we should not have any weapons so the Zionists can bomb us whenever they want.”
He said the US and Western approach in the developments “violates human rights and international laws, fairness and humanity, from whatever aspect you view it,” but added Iran will not give in in the face of bullying powers.
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