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Iran airlifts dozens of injured people from Lebanon for medical treatment

By
IFP Media Wire
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Lebanon Pager Attack

“Most of the injured have sustained severe injuries to their hands and eyes. Upon arrival in Iran, they will be immediately sent to designated hospitals for treatment,” Koulivand stated.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society announced it dispatched a team on Wednesday following Tuesday’s deadly pager explosions in Lebanon.

Videos posted on Iranian outlets show individuals being transferred by stretchers and taken onboard a plane, their heads and eyes wrapped in bandages.

Tehran has strongly condemned the pager blasts in Lebanon on Tuesday that killed at least 12 people and injured around 2,800.

Later on Wednesday, walkie-talkie detonations in Lebanon killed at least 20 people, according to the country’s health ministry.

UN General Assembly overwhelmingly supports Palestinian resolution to end Israeli occupation

By
IFP Media Wire
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Palestine UN

The nonbinding resolution put forward by the Palestinian Authority was based on the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) back in July, which said Israel’s presence in the occupied territories was unlawful and must end.

One hundred and twenty-four countries voted in favour of the resolution at UN headquarters in New York City, while 14 countries voted against it, including Israel and the United States.

The 43 countries that abstained include US allies Australia, Canada, Germany, and Ukraine.

Their ambassadors said that while they support a two-state solution, they cannot vote in favour of a resolution that does not spell out Israel’s right to defend itself.

Neither the ICJ ruling nor the resolution passed on Wednesday is legally binding but it still holds weight.

While the state of Palestine is not a full voting member of the UN, it has an upgraded observer status as of last May, and ambassador Riyad Mansour took his official seat in the General Assembly for the first time last week.

Momentum in favour of Palestine’s full membership at the UN picked up steam after the 7 October Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza that has killed more than 41,200 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in over 11 months of intense bombardment, including an estimated 16,700 children, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, blasted the result of the vote in a post on X.

“This is a shameful decision that backs the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic terrorism,” he wrote.

“Instead of marking the anniversary of the October 7 massacre by condemning Hamas and calling for the release of all 101 of the remaining hostages, the General Assembly continues to dance to the music of the Palestinian Authority, which backs the Hamas murderers.”

The resolution put forward by Palestine calls for Israeli settlers to be removed from the areas occupied by Israel in 1967; divestment from Israeli entities profiting from that land; and compensation for Palestinians who have been living under Israeli military occupation.

The text also demands that UN member states should not “recognize any changes in the physical character or demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the territory occupied by Israel on 5 June 1967, including East Jerusalem, except as agreed by the parties through negotiations”.

That reference is to the “two-state solution” model, which since 1993 has been the only accepted plan in the international community for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

As Israel has erected a seemingly endless stream of Israeli settlements dotting the West Bank over the last three decades – effectively ending the physical viability of two states – the popularity of a “one-state solution” for both Israelis and Palestinians has grown exponentially among younger proponents of the Palestinian liberation movement.

That notion, however, has no broad political support.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has welcomed the resolution and urged countries across the world to take steps to pressure Israel to adhere to it.

“The international consensus over this resolution renews the hopes of our Palestinian people – who are facing a comprehensive aggression and genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem – to achieve its aspirations of freedom and independence and establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Abbas said.

US defense contractors struggling to replenish Ukraine’s stockpiles: Report

By
IFP Media Wire
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Russia Ukraine War

Since April, none of the military aid packages provided by the US to Kiev have exceeded $400 million, with most of them worth between $125 million and $250 million, according to CNN. This is a drastic decrease from previous years, when US military aid packages fell within the $600-million to $800-million range like in 2022 and 2023, the media outlet said, adding that the largest in that period was worth $2.85 billion.

CNN’s sources pointed to America’s inventory and the Pentagon’s inability to replenish it.

“It’s about the stockpiles we have on our shelves, what [the Ukrainians] are asking for, and whether we can meet those requests with what we currently have” without damaging America’s national security, one of the officials said.

According to the report, the US produced 15,000 155mm artillery shells per month before the major escalation in early 2022 of ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Now, it is manufacturing 40,000 15mm shells per month. It would still take American companies more than a year to reach the target level of 100,000 shells per month, it said, adding that the overall process of ramping up production “will take years”.

“There are limits to how quickly we can draw down equipment without impacting military readiness, which is one reason packages get spaced out,” one of the CNN sources stated.

Last week, AP reported that the US could be left unable to spend $5.8 billion of military aid out of $13.4 billion approved by the Congress in April. The White House has asked Congress to extend the period of time when those funds can be used. CNN has since also reported that the Pentagon has also requested more time to spend the money. The deadline is the end of September.

The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Kiev’s Western backers have supposedly told it to abandon its hopes of defeating Russia on the battlefield. Achieving such a goal would require the West to “provide hundreds of billions of dollars worth of support, something neither Washington nor Europe can realistically do”, the WSJ stated in its piece.

Germany stopped approving arms exports to Israel: Report

By
IFP Media Wire
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Gaza War

A source close to the Ministry of Economy cited a senior government official as saying it had stopped work on approving export licences for arms to Israel due to legal and political pressure from legal cases arguing that such exports from Germany breached humanitarian law.

The ministry has not responded to requests for comment. However, the German government did issue a statement after the Reuters story was published.

“There is no German arms export boycott against Israel,” government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said.

Last year, Germany approved arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros ($363.5m), including military equipment and war weapons, a 10-fold increase from 2022, according to data from the Economy Ministry, which approves export licences.

However, approvals have dropped this year, with only 14.5 million euros worth ($16.1m) granted from January to August 21, according to data provided by the Economy Ministry in response to a parliamentary question.

Of this, the weapons of war category accounted for only 32,449 euros ($36,016).

In its defence of two cases, one before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and one in Berlin brought by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the government has said no weapons of war have been exported under any licence issued since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, apart from spares for long-term contracts, the source added.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians since October 7, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. It has also displaced most of the population of 2.3 million, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies.

No case challenging German arms exports to Israel has yet succeeded, including a case brought by Nicaragua at the ICJ.

But the issue has created friction within the government as the Chancellery maintains its support for Israel while the Greens-led economy and foreign ministries, sensitive to criticism from party members, have increasingly criticised the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Legal challenges across Europe have also led other allies of Israel to pause or suspend arms exports.

The United Kingdom this month suspended 30 out of 350 licences for arms exports to Israel due to concerns that Israel could be violating international humanitarian law.

In February, a Dutch court ordered the Netherlands to halt all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over concerns about their use in attacks on civilian targets in Gaza.

President Joe Biden’s administration this year paused – but then resumed – shipments of some bombs to Israel after US concerns about their use in densely populated areas in Gaza.

Approvals and shipments of other types of weapons, in more precise systems, continued as US officials maintained that Israel needed the capacity to defend itself.

Alexander Schwarz, a lawyer at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, which has filed five lawsuits against Berlin, suggested that the significant decline in approvals for 2024 indicated a genuine, though possibly temporary, reluctance to supply weapons to Israel.

“However, I would not interpret this as a conscious change in policy,” Schwarz added.

More explosions reported in Lebanon a day after mass pager blasts, casualties reported

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Lebanon Pager Attack

Reuters has reported that hand-held radios used by members of Hezbollah exploded in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon.

A security source told the news agency the radios were aquired by the Lebanese movement around five months ago—the same as the pagers.

Lebanese Health Ministry confirmed that at least 20 killed and 450 injured in communication device blasts.

Another security source also told CNN the devices that detonated in a fresh wave of explosions in Lebanon on Wednesday were walkie-talkies.

Preliminary information suggested there were between 15 to 20 explosions in southern suburbs of Beirut, and a further 15 to 20 blasts in southern Lebanon, the source added.

The walkie-talkies are less widely used than the pagers that blew up on Tuesday, as they had only been distributed among people organizing crowds, such as funerals and marches, the source said.

The National News Agency also reported that several solar power systems exploded in people’s homes across Lebanon.

Images of exploded solar panels, fingerprint readers and other devices circulated through social media, though it was unclear if they blew up by themselves or were simply near walkie-talkies which blew up.

It came a day after the simultaneous blast of hundreds of paging devices killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.

Report: Cultural embezzlement in Tehran Municipality involving precious paintings

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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According to Sazandegi Newspaper, nearly half of the paintings have purportedly been sold there but the other half of the works of art are still there.

At the beginning of this year, a letter was sent to the museum that said one of the managers signed the permission of the municipality to allow the 30 paintings to leave Tehran for the UAE but he did not push for their return later, the newspaper added.

They include paintings from Enayatollah Nazari, Aliakbar Sadeghi and Aydin Aghdashlou.

Tehran Municipality has yet to comment on the report.

Army source dismisses claims of Iran’s involvement in training Russian soldiers on drone-related issues

By
IFP Media Wire
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Iran Drone

The source reaffirmed Iran’s adherence to neutrality in the disputes specifically the Ukraine war, as repeatedly announced by Iranian officials.

Referring to the trip of an Iranian delegation to Moscow in mid-August, the source emphasized that Abbas Sharifi, along with seven others, was in the Alabino region near the Russian capital from August 15 to 21, 2022, to supervise the performance of the Iranian team participating in the 2022 International Army Games Tank Biathlon.

He added that over 20 countries, including China, Mongolia, Vietnam, Venezuela, Azerbaijan Republic, and Iran, took part in the competitions.

The military source further said none of the Iranian delegation’s members left Moscow or were present in Crimea.

Spokesman: No IRGC member killed in Lebanon pager blasts

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-
Lebanon Pager Attack

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.

Most EU member states support extending freeze of Russian assets

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Russian Central Bank

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.

Pezeshkian: Terror incident in Lebanon cause of shame for US

By
IFP Media Wire
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Masoud Pezeshkian

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.

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