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The Iranian and Turkish presidents, Hassan Rouhani and Recep Erdogan, made a joint statement following the meeting of the Supreme Council for Strategic Cooperation.
The leaders noted that they will take the measures necessary to increase trade volume between the two countries in order to achieve the goal of $ 30 billion.
Rouhani and Erdogan also expressed deep concern over the US withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, and the reintroduction of unilateral, unfair sanctions on Iran.
By News Desk,BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:45 A.M.) – An Armenian woman was appointed to a high ranking post in Iran this week, the state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on Friday morning.
According to the IRNA report, Talin Mansourian was appointed by the National Iranian Oil Company to head its Income and Investment Committee.With Iran facing heavy sanctions from the West, particularly the United States, Mansourian will be at the forefront of the ongoing economic crisis plaguing this Persian Gulf nation.
A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.1 has struck western Iran, near the border with Iraq, according to the US Geological Survey.
Prelim M6.1 Earthquake western Iran Aug-25 22:13 UTC, updates https://t.co/Pglax0k33J
— USGS Earthquakes (@USGS_Quakes) August 25, 2018
The senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander’s remarks come amid increased tensions between Tehran and Tel Aviv over the situation in Syria.
In a recent speech, IRGC deputy commander Hossein Salami boasted of the creation of an “Islamic army” near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which he warned threatened to “end” Israel.
“Today, an international Islamic army has been formed in Syria, and the voices of the Muslims are heard near the Golan,” Salami said, as quoted by the Times of Israel.
“Orders are awaited, so that…the eradication of the evil [Israeli] regime will land and the life of this regime will be ended for good. The life of the Zionist regime was never in [so much] danger as it is now,” the officer added.
According to Salami, Israel “constitutes a threat…to the entire Islamic world. That is the philosophy of the establishment of this regime.”
The IRGC officer also warned that Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, which is participating in the war in Syria against Islamist militants, has some 100,000 missiles aimed at Israel. “We are creating might in Lebanon because we want to fight our enemy from there with all our strength,” Salami said.
“Hezbollah today has tremendous might on the ground that can on its own break the Zionist regime. The Zionist regime has no strategic-depth,” he added.
On Sunday night, Syrian air defenses thwarted a missile attack on the T4 airbase in Homs province launched from south of the US-coalition controlled at-Tanf region in southern Syria. A source in the Syrian military has told media that the attack was perpetrated by Israel, although the IDF has yet to comment on the claims.
Tel Aviv has accused Tehran of building up a military presence in Syria as a springboard for attacks on Israel. Damascus rejected the claim, stressing that Tehran’s presence in Syria was limited to military advisers assisting the Syrian army in its fight against Islamist militants.
Source: https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201807091066183920-irgc-commander-anti-israel-remarks/?utm_source=https://t.co/HIDXK9uSm6&utm_medium=short_url&utm_content=hYDG&utm_campaign=URL_shortening
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is banking on Iran’s support for a Turkish offensive against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) bases in the Qandil Mountain range bordering Iran and Iraq, although questions remain about the scope of the operation and the extent of Iranian backing.”
Semih Idiz explains, “Hopes were raised in Ankara that cooperation between Turkey and Iran over the Kurdish issue would increase after both countries rejected the results of the independence referendum held by the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq in September 2017.”
But in an embarrassing retort to Erodgan and his ministers, who hyped the prospect of cooperation in Qandil, Iranian military spokesman Gen. Abulfazil Shekarchi said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran thinks military action against the territory of another country without permission from its legitimate government, with the excuse of combating terrorism, is illegal. … Iran will never support initiatives that will damage the sovereignty of neighboring countries.”
Idiz adds, “Like Russia — Turkey’s other “partner” in Syria under the Astana process — Iran also maintains that only foreign troops invited by the Syrian and Iraqi governments are legally present in those countries. Ankara counters by arguing that Baghdad and Damascus have lost control over parts of Iraq and Syria used by the PKK and the YPG, and says this has left Turkey with no choice but to act unilaterally in order to ward off the existential threat to the country’s security from these groups. … Iran’s own war against the PKK-affiliated Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan also fueled these hopes. Iran’s ongoing fight against this group, however, has not prevented Tehran from having a different policy on Turkey’s fight against the PKK or the YPG.”
“Ankara and Baghdad also remain at odds over the presence of the Turkish military in Bashiqa near Mosul. Iraq has repeatedly called on Turkey to pull back its forces there, a demand Ankara has refused to meet so far, citing the threat from the PKK,” Idiz writes.
“Pragmatism and a shared dislike of the West may impel Ankara and Tehran to maintain the appearance of good ties presently,” Idiz concludes. “Many expect, however, differences over Syria and Iraq to increase in time, because Turkey and Iran are ultimately on different sides of the Middle East’s active and growing sectarian fault line.”
Russia’s Sukhoi Civil Aircraft says its plans to sell planes to Iran will not change despite the US re-imposing sanctions against the country.
The company announced that it would continue to cooperate with Iranian airlines within the framework of interim agreements on the delivery of SuperJet 100 (SSJ100) passenger planes.
Russia’s Sputnik news agency quoted Alexander Rubtsov, the president of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, as saying that the planes that are to be delivered to Iran would be built without US-made components to avoid contract obstacles posed by the upcoming US sanctions.
“The Sukhoi Civil Aircraft will continue to work with Iranian airlines under the preliminary agreements signed at the Eurasia Air Show in April 2018. According to the agreements, the parties are studying in detail the possibility of supplying an updated version of SuperJets — the SSJ100R, which is implemented under the program of import substitution of the SSJ100 components,” the company announced in a statement.
The Russian company recently signed memorandums of understanding on the delivery of 40 Sukhoi SSJ100R passenger planes to two Iranian airlines until 2022.
Iran’s IRNA news agency announced in late April that Aseman Airlines and Iran Air Tours had signed contracts with Sukhoi Civil Aircraft for the purchase of a total of 40 SSJ100 planes. It added that the planes purchased by Aseman Airlines belonged to RRJ-95R class of Sukhoi’s latest model of SuperJets.
IRNA also quoted an Iran Air Tours official as saying that the total value of the company’s purchases of Sukhoi planes stood at $1 billion, adding that deliveries would begin the next year.
US President Donald Trump last Tuesday said he would pull the US out of a nuclear agreement with Iran that had allowed the removal of certain sanctions against the country.
The deal – that the US signed with Iran in 2015 together with Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – also envisaged moves by the Islamic Republic to restrict certain aspects of its nuclear energy program.
Trump also signed a presidential memo to reinstate the nuclear-related sanctions that would include restrictions on the sales of planes and parts to the Iran.
This has put the fate of the country’s deals with aviation giants Airbus and Boeing into uncertainty.
In December 2016, Airbus signed a deal to sell Iran 100 jetliners worth about $19 billion at list prices. It has delivered three planes so far.
In the same month, Boeing announced a contract with Iran for 80 aircraft valued at $16.6 billion. The company separately struck a deal with Iran’s Aseman Airlines to sell 737 MAX aircraft for $3 billion, with purchase rights for another 30 planes. No deliveries have been made yet.
Both could suffer a combined loss of above $39 billion once Trump’s anti-Iran sanctions regime is put into effect.
Israel, Iran move closer to open war
By By Seth J. Frantzman and Carlo Munoz — The Washington Times
U.S., European powers back Israel’s right to self-defense, U.N., Russia seek restraint
JERUSALEM — Massively retaliating for what it said was an Iranian military strike across the Golan Heights, Israeli forces unleashed a heavy bombardment against Iranian military positions across Syria on Thursday, in a significant escalation that has brought the two long-hostile Middle East heavyweights to the brink of open war.
The U.S. and a number of European powers quickly endorsed what they said was Israel’s right to self-defense, while the Russian government and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged both sides to pull back. But Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and his aides vowed to strike back hard at what they say are increasing encroachments by Iran and its proxies across the border in Syria.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told reporters here that the Israeli missile and airstrikes had hit “nearly all” of Iran’s significant infrastructure sites in Syria. Iran and Tehran-allied militias have been active in Syria supporting the government of ally President Bashar Assad in the country’s seven-year civil war. The heavy Israeli strikes were in response to approximately 20 missiles fired from inside Syria at Israeli targets in the Golan Heights.
“If it rains on us it will be a flood on them,” Mr. Lieberman said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military action was intended to send a “clear message” to Tehran to back down, and hinted there may be more to come.
Israel is in “a continuous campaign,” the conservative prime minister said, adding, “Whoever attacks us, we will attack them sevenfold, and whoever prepares to attack us, we will act against them first.”
A senior Iranian security official has underlined the necessity for Iran, China and Russia to adopt a joint strategy to counter US attempts at harming the three countries.
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani made the remarks at a Thursday meeting with Chinese public security minister Guo Shengkun on the sidelines of an international security conference in Russia’s resort city of Sochi.
Representatives from 110 countries are attending the two-day conference to discuss global security issues, including ways to counter terrorism and narcotics as well as the promotion of international peace and stability.
Shamkhani highlighted Tehran and Beijing’s willingness to promote their ties to the highest level, noting that efforts to remove some hurdles in the way of mutual cooperation, including in banking and financial sectors, must be considered as a priority.
The senior Iranian official pointed to ongoing efforts by the countries sponsoring Takfiri terrorism to relocate the remnants of such militant groups from the Middle East to Afghanistan, warning that the deployment of terrorist groups on Afghan soil will pose serious threats to the borders of Iran, China and Russia.
Shamkhani stressed the need for close cooperation among Iran, Russia, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan to counter the spread of terrorism in the region, calling for a joint intelligence, security and operational mechanism to put an end to the relocation of terrorist groups to Afghanistan.
The presidents of Iran, Russia and Turkey have reaffirmed their commitment to work toward achieving a sustainable ceasefire between warring sides in Syria and bringing peace and stability to the war-torn Arab country.
Iran’s Hassan Rouhani and his Russian and Turkish counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “reaffirmed their determination to continue their active cooperation on Syria for the achievement of lasting ceasefire between the conflicting parties and advancement of the political process envisaged by UN Security Council Resolution 2254,” said a joint statement issued at the end of the meeting of the three leaders in Ankara on Wednesday.
In the statement, Rouhani, Putin and Erdogan also emphasized their “strong and continued commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity, territorial integrity and non-sectarian character of Syria.”
They also stressed that there could be “no military solution” to the Syrian conflict and that the conflict could be settled only through a “negotiated political process.”
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, speaks during the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Md., on March 3, 2016. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
President Trump’s appointment of John Bolton as his new national security adviser has created a stir among foreign policy experts. He is known for expressing extreme skepticism about international institutions (including the United Nations, where he served as U.S. ambassador in the George W. Bush administration). He has advocated a preemptive strike against North Korea. And he has also repeatedly proposed “regime change” (meaning “war”) in Tehran.
Since the latter issue is one of the trickiest facing the Trump administration, it’s worth taking a closer look.
Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran mirror those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and one of his key ideological partners, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK).
Today the MEK bears little resemblance to the highly organized, influential and militant opposition force that it was in Iran while seeking to topple the shah during the 1979 revolution. Initially it worked in cooperation with the clerical government. In fact, children of several top officials in the Islamic Republic joined the MEK.
When it became clear that the MEK could no longer coexist with the ruling Islamic Republic Party, some MEK members withdrew from the group, while others were imprisoned. They either recanted and returned to society or were executed.
Those who were left fled to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran in 1980, gave them a haven. Many took up arms and fought against their Iranian countrymen, earning the group the unofficial nickname monafegheen, or the “hypocrites.” That title has stuck, and most Iranians inside the country, regardless of their political tendencies, refer to them as such.
The group is loathed by most Iranians, mainly for the traitorous act of fighting alongside the enemy.
But it is the group’s activities in the decades since that have cemented its reputation as a deranged cult. For decades its command center was a compound in Iraq’s Diyala province, where more than 3,000 members lived in virtual captivity. The few who were able to escape told of being cut off from their loved ones, forced into arranged marriages, brainwashed, sexually abused and tortured.
All this was carried out under the supervision of the group’s leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, the husband and wife at the top of the organization’s pyramid. He has been missing since the U.S. invasion in 2003 and is presumed dead. She now runs the group and makes regular public appearances with her powerful friends from the West — such as Bolton.
The group was long a fixture on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations for having killed American citizens. Bolton and others successfully lobbied to have the designation removed in 2012. That did little to change how average Iranians think of the organization.
In the seven years I lived in Iran, many people expressed criticism of the ruling establishment — at great potential risk to themselves. Some hoped for regime change by military force, others dreamed of a return of the monarchy and many more wanted to see a peaceful transition to a secular alternative to clerical rule. In all that time, though, I never met a person who thought the MEK should, or could, present a viable alternative.
But apparently that doesn’t matter to its supporters in Washington.
Of course they were paid for their loyalty. “Very few former U.S. government officials shilled pro bono for the MEK,” said a former State Department official who worked on Iran. Among the long bipartisan list of people who have taken money from the group in exchange for speaking at its events are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean. Bolton, the former official told me, was also paid.
Their many efforts failed to the block the nuclear deal with Iran. Despite the long list of nefarious acts still carried out by Tehran, the biggest threat that Iran posed to international security — the issue that our allies and other world powers all agreed needed to be resolved — has been resolved.
Based on U.S. assessments and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran appears to be complying with the nuclear deal.
To those who claim that the nuclear deal isn’t working, regime change remains the only solution. For the MEK, and Bolton, if his words are to be taken at face value, the only path to that could be war. The group has long been prepared to do whatever it takes to see that happen, including presenting fake intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/03/24/john-bolton-wants-regime-change-in-iran-and-so-does-the-cult-that-paid-him/?utm_term=.ba1a62f32c47