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Some 5,000 flood victims housed in emergency shelters in southeastern Iran

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Iran Flood

“Thanks to efforts by aid workers, 4,985,000 people have been housed in emergency shelters and 102 people have been saved from floods,” announced the provincial Red Crescent Society.

Plans have also been set in motion to offer relief services to hundreds of people in the region’s rural areas.

Iran’s Red Crescent has deployed dozens of operational teams to the flood-hit areas.

The cities of Dashtiari Qasrqand, Nikshahr and Chabahar are the hardest hit areas with roads closed for rescue operations.

The flood hit the region after several days of intense rainfall that made the riverbeds burst their banks and dams overflow.

More than 10,000 people were affected by the flood.

Zelensky thinking about firing Ukrainian FM amid war: Report

By
IFP Media Wire
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Dmitro Kuleba

Kuleba, 42, has been foreign minister since March 2020. Prior to that, he was deputy prime minister for Euro-Atlantic integration and Ukraine’s envoy to the Council of Europe.

“There are a lot of questions for Kuleba,” the anonymous source told Strana.

“In particular, there are a lot of complaints regarding the candidacies of ambassadors provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

Zelensky’s office is “generally dissatisfied with the diplomatic service”, the source added.

Strana’s report coincided with the resignation of OIeg Nikolenko, the chief spokesman for the foreign ministry. Posting a photo of himself with Kuleba on Facebook, he announced on Friday that his service with the ministry was ending, without specifying why.

On Thursday, Zelensky announced he was appointing General Valery Zaluzhny – former commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces – as Kiev’s new ambassador to London. The post has been empty since July last year, when Zelensky fired Ambassador Vadim Pristayko for criticizing his behavior at the NATO summit.

According to Strana, the “most likely candidate” for the new foreign minister is Igor Zhovkva, Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff, who oversees foreign policy at the presidential office.

Kuleba’s current deputy is Andrey Melnik, Ukraine’s former ambassador in Germany. He became notorious during his tenure in Berlin for outright un-diplomatic behavior, from insulting the host country by dubbing Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liver sausage,” to cursing out Elon Musk, donor of priceless Starlink satellite services to Ukraine.

He was finally withdrawn in November 2022, after glorifying WWII Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera on a podcast.

Once back in Kiev, however, Melnik was rewarded with a promotion to deputy foreign minister – the rank he kept even after Zelensky appointed him ambassador to Brazil last June.

Gaza ceasefire By Ramadan “looking tough”: Biden

By
IFP Media Wire
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Joe Biden

“It’s looking tough,” Biden told reporters on Friday when asked if a deal to halt the five-month-old war could be achieved by Ramadan, which is due to start as early as Sunday depending on the sighting of the moon.

Biden has been dubbed as “Genocide Joe” by American protesters due to his administration’s continued support for Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The Biden administration has backed Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory as an instance of “self-defense”, and has provided the regime with thousands of arms consignments since the onset of the war.

Washington has also been casting its veto against the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions that would call on the occupying regime to cease its aggression.

Biden stated that “I sure am” worried about the possibility of violence in Israeli-occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as Ramadan approaches.

Palestinian resistance movement Hamas’s armed wing on Friday called on supporters to mobilize towards the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in East al-Quds.

It also said there would be no compromise on the movement’s demand that Israel withdraw from Gaza to secure the release of hostages seized by Hamas.

Biden has been facing mounting pressure to stop providing Israel with bombs, missiles and ammunition since the regime launched its military offensive against Gaza in early October. The regime’s forces have so far killed more than 30,900 Palestinians, mostly children and women, in the besieged territory.

Five months into the war in Gaza, the Biden administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress to greenlight an emergency weapons sale to Israel.

During his State of the Union address on Thursday night, Biden stated the US Army will construct a temporary pier on the Gazan coast in order to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The plan to build a temporary port off Gaza’s coast to step up the delivery of humanitarian aid has been criticised as a bid to divert attention from hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians and Israel’s consistent blocking of assistance to the enclave.

Popular attitudes toward US souring across West Asia: Survey

By
IFP Media Wire
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Iranians gather outside British embassy in Tehran to slam Yemen attack

According to an opinion poll conducted among more than 8,000 respondents in 16 countries across the region, as many as 76% of those polled said that their attitude toward the United States had become “more negative”. This translates into a loss of confidence in the United States across a wide swath of people in the Arab world, the pollsters surmised.

The anti-American sentiment has manifested itself in consumer boycotts of US brands, such as Starbucks and McDonald’s, by Arab youth. Many of them have abandoned plans to earn degrees at US universities or build careers at US companies.

The FT cited a Western diplomat serving in the Middle East as saying that the current outburst of anger toward the West and the United States in particular is much worse than in 2003 when the US and its “coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

According to Dana El Kurd of the Arab Center Washington, the West’s war has dealt a serious blow to Western values and the democracy-related discourse across the region.

Israel declared war on Hamas after the Gaza-based fighters unexpectedly attacked nearby settlements on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. Dozens of captives were subsequently released during a weeklong ceasefire in November.

Since then, nearly 31,000 Palestinians have been killed and another 72,000 wounded, according to the Gaza health ministry. Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire, insisting on its goal to completely “eliminate” Hamas in Gaza.

President Joe Biden has been facing mounting pressure to stop providing Israel with bombs, missiles and ammunition since the regime launched its military offensive against the besieged enclave in early October.

Five months into the war in Gaza, the Biden administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress to greenlight an emergency weapons sale to Israel.

Sending combat forces to Ukraine ‘not on table’: France

By
IFP Media Wire
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Russia Ukraine War

French President Emmanuel Macron last month sent shockwaves around Ukraine when he refused to rule out any option in the conflict, including the sending of Western troops. Despite troubled reactions from allies, including notably Germany, he has in recent days appeared to double down on the remarks, urging the West not to be “cowardly”.

Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu however, said the furor caused by Macron’s initial remarks after a conference of Ukraine’s European allies on February 26 was due to them being “taken out of context”.

“There were hypotheses clearly put on the table but not combat ground troops as may have been said here or there,” he told broadcaster BFMTV, noting that Macron had reaffirmed that France would not be a “co-belligerent” in the conflict.

“But between the transfer of arms and co-belligerence – in other words direct war with Russia – have we done everything within that space? Are there paths that we can explore? And notably paths involving a military presence?” he asked.

Lecornu added that this could include mine clearance and the training of Ukrainian soldiers on Ukrainian soil.

“The more Ukraine needs to conscript, to raise up its army, the greater the need will be to ramp up training,” he continued.

He also announced that three French companies would create partnerships to produce and maintain weapons and spare parts on Ukrainian soil. They are the Delair drone manufacturer, Nexter, the French branch of the Franco-German company KNDS which produces the Caesar canons delivered to Kyiv, and Arquus, a French manufacturer of land military equipment which has a contract to maintain armored vehicles.

“We are not in the same situation as two years ago” when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Lecornu said, noting that Kyiv’s summer counteroffensive had not met with the success Ukraine’s allies had hoped for.

He also added that the situation within Russia had changed, as shown by “the assassination” of Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died in prison last month and who supporters claim was killed on orders of the Kremlin.

Navalny’s family and supporters have alleged Russian President Vladimir Putin of having him killed, an accusation that the Kremlin has rejected.

Macron on Thursday hosted French party leaders to clarify his policy on Ukraine ahead of parliament debates next week. Several of the leaders expressed unease afterward that he had made clear there were “no limits” to France’s support of Ukraine.

Faulty aid drop kills 5 in Gaza

By
IFP Media Wire
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Gaza Aid Drop

The casualties occurred following a botched attempt to drop humanitarian assistance from a plane, which ended up landing in a residential area in Sheikh Radwan, northwest of Gaza City, according to Al-Jazeera.

Videos and photos captured by local journalists showed over a dozen packages dropped from a plane falling at a great speed near the al-Fayrouz Towers area.

The Palestinian media office in Gaza confirmed that five people had been killed, and criticised the use of air drops to deliver aid.

“These operations are useless and not the best way to bring in aid, and we demand the opening of land crossings to bring in thousands of tons of aid immediately and urgently,” it noted.

“Dropping aid in this way takes on a showy and propaganda character rather than a humanitarian [one],” the media office added.

“We warned previously that they pose a death threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip, and that is what happened.”

An eyewitness told Al-Jazeera on Friday: “People were waiting for the drops when they noticed they were coming in fast. So a group of people took cover in a construction site”.

“One of the packages fell atop the site, causing it to collapse, killing and wounding people inside. I rushed to help the people inside when I realised my cousin was among them. He is now dead.”

Airdropping aid is used when all other alternatives fail, and when a population desperately needs life-saving aid while it is cut off from the world.

So far, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and France have coordinated with Israel to airdrop aid in different areas of the blockaded Gaza Strip.

The US on Sunday carried out its first humanitarian aid airdrop in Gaza with more than 30,000 meals parachuted in by three military planes. The operation was reportedly carried out jointly with Jordan’s air force.

Palestinians have stated that airdropped aid quantities are too small in comparison to the needs of a starving population in Gaza.

“It is pointless,” Ahmad Mansour, a Palestinian in the south of Gaza, told Middle East Eye earlier this week.

“A lot of the aid ended up in the sea or areas controlled by the Israeli army. You have got thousands of people running towards a few parcels of aid. They are playing games with us.”

“I cannot understand why the world cannot pressure Israel to allow humanitarian aid trucks in.

“Why can humanitarian aid workers not be protected to distribute the aid fairly? Is the new motto: ‘We will eat and get medicine only if we are lucky enough to catch something falling from the sky’?” he added.

UN says Israeli settlement expansion in Palestinian territories amounts to war crime

By
IFP Media Wire
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Israeli settlement

The international community has long viewed Israeli settlements as a violation of international law and a hindrance to Palestinian statehood.

Turk’s report found that the Israeli government’s policies “appear aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to steadily integrate this occupied territory into the State of Israel”.

“Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” Turk stated in a statement that accompanied a 16-page report about the growth in illegal Israeli housing units.

The report, based on the UN’s own monitoring as well as other sources, documented 24,300 new Israeli housing units in the occupied West Bank during a one-year period through to the end of October, which it said was the highest since monitoring began in 2017.

It also added there had been a dramatic increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of both Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, particularly since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which triggered the current war in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces or by settlers, the report stressed.

It additionally pointed to forced evictions, non-issuance of building permits, home demolitions and restrictions on movement imposed on Palestinians.

The US, Britain and France have imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers for acts of violence and incitement against Palestinians living in the West Bank in recent weeks.

Israel’s settlement-planning authority on Wednesday greenlit permits for nearly 3,500 new housing units in occupied Palestinian territory, the first such approvals since Israel’s war on Gaza began last year. The approval sparked widespread condemnation from several countries, including Israel’s allies.

The Israeli plans to build settler homes in Maale Adumim, Efrat and Kedar flew “in the face of international law”, Turk said.

The UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, also stated all settlements were “illegal under international law” and a “driver of conflict” in the West Bank.

Israel started building settlements after capturing the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. It is illegal under international law for Israel to establish settlements in these Palestinian territories.

Iran’s Statistics Center issues stark warning about population decline

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-
Iran Population

Over recent decades, Iran has witnessed a steady decline in childbirth rates, with the population growth rate dropping from 4.8 percent in the early 1980s to below one percent in recent years.

Iranian officials, most notably the country’s leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, have been calling for people to help increase the child birth rate, warning of the dangers of their refusal to do so.
Currently Iran has a population of 85 million people.

Iran issues fresh warning against Kuwait over Arash gas field row

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Arash gas field

The Iranian Vice President for Legal Affairs Mohammad Dehghan reiterated on Thursday that the ownership dispute should be resolved through dialogue.

“Arash is an oil and gas field and part of it belongs to us. We do not have a maritime border with Kuwait, but we discovered the field and drilled rigs there many years ago without taking advantage of it so we won’t create tensions with our neighbors,” Dehghan clarified.

Iran argues that nearly 40 percent of the gas field is located in the territorial waters of Iran, but Kuwait had presented a different border demarcation that puts the entire field within the neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and denies Iran any right over the field.

The Iranian vice president hit out at Kuwait for not proposing “any constructive idea so far” and for making agreements with Saudi Arabia on the issue.

Iran began talks with Kuwait in 2000 to develop the gas field in the Persian, but no agreements were reached.

Iran stresses reserves right to respond to any Israeli threat or action

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Netanyahu and Katz

Amir Saeid Iravani, in his letter jointly addressed to the UN chief Antonio Guterres and the president of the UN Security Council (UNSC) Yamazaki Kazuyuki on Thursday, stated that Iran has the ‘legitimate’ and ‘inherent’ right based on international law and the United Nations Charter to ward off “any adventurism or destructive move by the Israeli regime.”

The letter was in reaction to an earlier letter by the Israel regime’s foreign minister Israel Katz, claiming that Iran has stepped up weapons deliveries to the Hezbollah resistance movement in Lebanon.

The letter dismissed the Israeli allegation as ‘completely baseless,’ arguing that the regime seeks to divert the world’s attention from its ongoing genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip that has so far left nearly 31,000 people dead and the entire besieged territory almost in ruins.

While rejecting the accusation, the Iranian diplomat stressed Iran supports the ‘inherent right’ of the resistance movements in Syria and Lebanon to respond to Israeli aggression.

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