Tasnim News Agency said Maood Shamkhani is accused of accepting bribes.
He is the nephew of former secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani.
Maoow Shamkhani was the deputy of the Arvand Free Zone for technical and infrastructure affairs in 2015.
The Iranian Judiciary has intensified a crackdown on corruption that it started under its current chief Gholamhossein Mohsen Ejei.
Iranian futsallers got off to a good start, taking the lead in the first minute. That came about when Salar Aghapour placed it on a tee for Mahdi Karimi, who finished into the bottom corner of the net.
Saeid Ahmadabbasi who scored the second goal, netted for the eighth time in this tournament during the first half.
Thailand then retook the initiative to make a comeback. And they made it in a spectacular way in the 25th minute. Jirawat Sornwichian exchanged passes with Muhammad Osamanmusa before darting through center and chipping the ball over Mohammadi.
Iran was too quick to hit back. Two minutes later, Sangsefidi lofted the perfect cross to an unmarked Aliasghar Hassanzadeh to volley home to regain their two-goal advantage.
Thailand was desperate trying to make up for the goals Iran netted in the second half. But their offensive posture cost them dearly in the 34th minute when Mohammadi gained possession in his area before lofting the ball over to score Iran’s fourth goal.
This secured Iran’s 13th AFC Futsal Asian Cup title.
Abbas told a special meeting of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh that about 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah and only a “small strike” would force those people to flee.
“The biggest catastrophe in the Palestinian people’s history would then happen,” he said.
“We call on the United States of America to ask Israel to not carry on the Rafah attack. America is the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime.”
Abbas reiterated he rejects the displacement of Palestinians into Jordan and Egypt, and added he’s concerned once Israel completes its operation in Gaza, it will attempt to force the Palestinian population out of the occupied West Bank and into Jordan.
Israel, which has threatened for weeks to launch an all-out assault on the neighborhood saying its goal is to wipeout Hamas presence there, stepped up airstrikes on Rafah last week.
Western countries, including Israel’s closest ally the United States, have pleaded with it to hold back from attacking the southern city, which abuts the Egyptian border and is sheltering more than a million Palestinians who fled Israel’s seven-month long aggression against much of the rest of Gaza.
Abbas stated that Israel had killed more than 34,000 civilians, mostly children, women, and the elderly, and injured 75,000, in addition to destroying 75% of buildings, institutions, roads, mosques, and universities in the Gaza Strip.
Professors and students of universities in the capital Tehran joined the academics all over the country after noon prayers earlier in the day and held a gathering in support of the uprising by pro-Palestinian students in the US and Europe.
Students of Tabriz University in northwest Iran held a rally dubbed “the Awakened Conscience” in defense of the Palestinian people’s rights and in condemnation of the occupying regime’s crimes.
In central Iran, students in the city of Yazd also lend their support to the protest rallies held in US and European universities, which have faced harsh crackdown by the police during the past weeks.
The violent dealing with the students have drawn worldwide condemnations.
Similar demonstrations were staged in dozens of other Iranian cities, including Abadan, Ilam, Isfahan, and Lahijan.
Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands of others have been injured in the months-long US-backed Israeli onslaught that has left the besieged Palestinian enclave in ruins.
Ahmad Ghandehari said on Sunday, “Currently, the level of Lake Urmia has reached 1,270.53 meters, its area has expanded to 1,790 square kilometers, and its volume is 2.34 billion cubic meters.”
Despite the unfavorable rainfall in the catchment area in the first 6 months of the year, about 200 million cubic meters of water was released from the dams of the catchment area to the lake and its satellite wetlands, he added.
However, with the increase in downpours in the catchment area of the receding lake in the second half of the year and the release of the water rights from upstream dams, the lake is in a better condition.
Lake Urmia was one once the world’s 6th saltwater lake and the biggest of its kind in West Asia, but due to unsustainable water consumption by farmers in the region and climate change it is feared that the lake will be drying up.
Zelensky’s February announcement that 31,000 military personnel had been killed since 2022 greatly downplayed the true toll to avoid disrupting an already-struggling recruitment and mobilization effort, the lawmaker said, acknowledging that there is a manpower shortage.
“I don’t think it’s an emergency right now. We do need more people, but we need to balance … We see so many deaths and so many wounded. If they go, [troops] want to know how long they will be there,” the lawmaker said.
Ukraine likely cannot consider launching an offensive this year due to the acute shortage of soldiers and the superiority of Russian firepower, the newspaper noted.
On April 11, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a bill on mobilization aimed at replenishing Ukrainian forces depleted by two years of military conflict with Russia. On April 16, Zelensky signed it into law. The document will take effect on May 18.
The bill says that people liable for military duty must report to military commissions to clarify their registration data within 60 days after mobilization is announced. The bill also obliges people liable for military service to carry military identity cards with them during the period of mobilization and present them at the request of military registration and enlistment office employees, police, and border guards.
Martial law was introduced in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The next day, Zelensky signed a decree on general mobilization. Under martial law, men aged from 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving Ukraine.
Other officials upheld support for Israel’s representation.
Under a National Security Memorandum (NSM) issued by President Joe Biden in February, Blinken must report to Congress by 8 May whether he finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of US weapons does not violate US or international law.
By 24 March, at least seven State Department bureaus had sent in their contributions to an initial “options memo” to Blinken. Parts of the memo, which has not been previously reported, were classified.
The submissions to the memo provide the most extensive picture to date of the divisions inside the State Department over whether Israel might be violating international humanitarian law in Gaza.
“Some components in the department favoured accepting Israel’s assurances, some favoured rejecting them and some took no position,” a US official said.
A joint submission from four bureaus – Democracy Human Rights & Labor; Population, Refugees and Migration; Global Criminal Justice and International Organization Affairs – raised “serious concern over non-compliance” with international humanitarian law during Israel’s prosecution of the Gaza war.
The assessment from the four bureaus said Israel’s assurances were “neither credible nor reliable”. It cited eight examples of Israeli military actions that the officials said raise “serious questions” about potential violations of international humanitarian law.
These included repeatedly striking protected sites and civilian infrastructure; “unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage”; taking little action to investigate violations or to hold to account those responsible for significant civilian harm and “killing humanitarian workers and journalists at an unprecedented rate”.
The assessment from the four bureaus also cited 11 instances of Israeli military actions the officials said “arbitrarily restrict humanitarian aid”, including rejecting entire trucks of aid due to a single “dual-use” item, “artificial” limitations on inspections as well as repeated attacks on humanitarian sites that should not be hit.
Another submission to the memo reviewed by Reuters, from the bureau of Political and Military Affairs, which deals with US military assistance and arms transfers, warned Blinken that suspending US weapons would limit Israel’s ability to meet potential threats outside its airspace and require Washington to re-evaluate “all ongoing and future sales to other countries in the region”.
Any suspension of US arms sales would invite “provocations” by Iran and aligned militias, the bureau claimed in its submission, illustrating the push-and-pull inside the department as it prepares to report to Congress.
The submission did not directly address Israel’s assurances.
Inputs to the memo from the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and US ambassador to Israel Jack Lew stated they assessed Israel’s assurances as credible and reliable, a second US official told Reuters.
The State Department’s legal bureau, known as the Office of the Legal Adviser, “did not take a substantive position” on the credibility of Israel’s assurances, a source familiar with the matter noted.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the agency doesn’t comment on leaked documents.
“On complex issues, the secretary often hears a diverse range of views from within the department, and he takes all of those views into consideration,” Miller added.
When asked about the memo, an Israeli official stressed: “Israel is fully committed to its commitments and their implementation, among them the assurances given to the US government.”
Biden administration officials repeatedly have stressed they have not found Israel in violation of international law.
Blinken has seen all of the bureau assessments about Israel’s pledges, the second US official added.
Matthew Miller on 25 March stated the department received the pledges. However, the State Department is not expected to render its complete assessment of credibility until the 8 May report to Congress.
Further deliberations between the department’s bureaus are underway ahead of the report’s deadline, the US official added.
USAID also provided input to the memo.
“The killing of nearly 32,000 people, of which the GOI (Government of Israel) itself assesses roughly two-thirds are civilian, may well amount to a violation of the international humanitarian law requirement,” USAID officials wrote in the submission.
USAID does not comment on leaked documents, a USAID spokesperson said.
The warnings about Israel’s possible breaches of international humanitarian law made by some senior State Department officials come as Israel is vowing to launch a military offensive into Rafah, the southern-most pocket of the Gaza Strip that is home to over a million people displaced by the war, despite repeated warnings from Washington not to do so.
Israel’s military conduct has come under increasing scrutiny as its forces have killed over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health authorities, most of them women and children.
The National Security Memorandum was issued in early February after Democratic lawmakers began questioning whether Israel was abiding by international law.
The memorandum imposed no new legal requirements but asked the State Department to demand written assurances from countries receiving US-funded weapons that they are not violating international humanitarian law or blocking US humanitarian assistance.
It also required the administration to submit an annual report to Congress to assess whether countries are adhering to international law and not impeding the flow of humanitarian aid.
If Israel’s assurances are called into question, Biden would have the option to “remediate” the situation through actions ranging from seeking fresh assurances to suspending further US weapons transfers, according to the memorandum.
Biden can suspend or put conditions on US weapons transfers at any time.
He has so far resisted calls from rights groups, left-leaning Democrats and Arab American groups to do so.
But earlier this month he threatened for the first time to put conditions on the transfer of US weapons to Israel, if it does not take concrete steps to improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Earlier this week, British journalist Douglas Murray published an article in the New York Post claiming that the ICC, which is investigating Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7 and Tel Aviv’s response to it, is planning to bring individual war-crimes cases against Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and one of the country’s top military commanders, most likely the chief of the general staff.
Netanyahu has shared Murray’s article on X (formerly Twitter), insisting that as long as he is in power, “Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.”
“The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it,” he added.
Israel’s military operation in Gaza is a “just war against genocidal terrorists”, which will continue until victory is achieved, the prime minister insisted.
“While the ICC will not affect Israel’s actions, it would set a dangerous precedent that threatens the soldiers and officials of all democracies fighting savage terrorism and wanton aggression,” he warned.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the death toll from Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave has already reached 34,400 people, with 77,500 others wounded.
The ICC launched an investigation into alleged war crimes by the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups in the occupied West Bank and Gaza back in 2021. The probe covers the events since 2014. The Hague-based court insists that violations committed during the Israeli-Palestinian escalation which followed the October 7 attack are also within the jurisdiction of its investigation.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported last week that Netanyahu’s government had known about the possible ICC warrants even before Murray’s article and held an “emergency discussion” on the issue at the prime minister’s office involving several ministers and legal experts.
Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its jurisdiction, but the Palestinians joined the organization in 2015. If warrants against Netanyahu and other Israeli officials are issued, the 124 ICC member-states would be obliged to arrest them if they set foot in their countries.
The outlet examined seven deadly airstrikes between January and April filmed by its camera crews in the city of Rafah and the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone and which resulted in the deaths of Palestinian civilians.
“The crews compiled the GPS coordinates of each strike, all of which hit an area identified by the Israeli military as an evacuation zone in an online interactive map it published on Dec. 1,” NBC wrote, noting that this map has not been updated and remains accurate, according to the IDF.
The map in question had previously been criticized by international humanitarian organizations and by Palestinians, as being confusing and hard to read, with many pointing out that at most times it isn’t even accessible to civilians on the ground, due to regular cellphone and internet blackouts.
Human Rights Watch program director Sari Bashi has told NBC that the attacks highlighted in the outlet’s investigation are not isolated.
“People are fleeing to roads that the government told them to use to places where the Israeli government told them to go. And when they go there, they get killed” Bashi added.
In one example provided by NBC, the IDF dropped leaflets in Gaza on December 18, telling residents to go to Rafah’s Tal Al Sultan, Al Zuhur and Al Shaboura neighborhoods, designating them as safe. The outlet’s investigation found that all three locations were later hit by airstrikes, resulting in the deaths of dozens of civilians.
When asked by NBC to comment on the seven highlighted airstrikes, the IDF reportedly claimed in an email to the outlet that it was “not aware of any strike at the provided coordinates and times”.
The IDF launched its offensive in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli territory, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 people and saw some 250 taken hostage.
Israel’s response has so far claimed the lives of over 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
The report, published by the British state media broadcaster BBC on Saturday, said British forces – known as “wet boots”– would drive trucks along a temporary causeway and deliver aid to a secure distribution area on land.
British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps affirmed that the UK continues to take “a leading role in delivering support in coordination with the United States and other international allies.
He also stated that London intends to establish more humanitarian aid routes, while not confirming the UK’s future role once the corridor is open.
Meanwhile, the United States has said no American forces would be stationed ashore, adding that an unnamed “third party” would be responsible for carrying out aid deliveries from the pier to shore.
The UK is understood to be considering tasking British troops with the operation, as the country has been involved in planning the sea-borne aid operation.
However, the British government said a final decision has not yet been made, adding that the prime minister should examine the issue to whether deploy boots on the ground or simply have workforces to drive aid trucks to Gaza’s shore.
The Israeli military has reportedly vowed to ensure security for the operation and enhance the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
This comes even though the occupying regime continues to obstruct the delivery of aid into Gaza amid its genocidal war on the blockaded territory which started in early October last year.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 34,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Another 77,500 individuals have sustained injuries as well.
Israel has also imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
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