Iran Releases U.S. Resident Charged With Spying
The man, Nizar Zakka, an information technology expert with American permanent residency, was imprisoned in Iran for more than four years. But on Monday, Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency reported that he would be released.
Lebanon’s internal security agency on Tuesday tweeted an image of Mr. Zakka aboard a plane bound for Beiruit, with the organization’s chief.
The announcement, after nearly a year of requests by top Lebanese officials for Mr. Zakka’s freedom, was billed in Iran and Lebanon as a gesture of good will from one nation to the other.
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Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights
Iran has accelerated enrichment of uranium, says UN watchdog
The assessment comes at a time of sharply increased US-Iranian confrontation, a year after Washington abandoned an international agreement that imposed curbs on Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of financial sanctions.
Washington tightened sanctions on Iran from the start of May, ordering all countries and companies to halt any imports of Iranian oil or be banished from the global financial system. It also dispatched extra troops to the region to counter unspecified threats from Iran.
Iran responded with a threat to increase its enrichment of uranium, saying it was up to European countries who still support the nuclear deal to save it by finding ways to ensure Tehran receives the economic benefits it was promised.
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Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights
LONDON: The wives of two high-ranking Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members are allegedly involved in 12 cases of financial corruption, several media outlets reported on Saturdayciting a member of Tehran City Council.
Council member Morteza Alviri made the allegations when asked during an interview about the role the wives of General Qasem Soleimani and General Ali Jafari played in transferring the ownership of a number of companies.
Alviri said: “Twelve complete and clear cases of serious violations were delivered to the judiciary to act. This is one of our complaints, that I recently talked about.
“That is why when a few eight-year-old girls perform at a women-only event in Milad Tower, they woke up Mr. Najafi (former Tehran mayor) at midnight to take action against it, but for twelve obvious financial violations the prosecutor’s office does not even ask for an explanation. We do have this complaint,” he added.
Mohammad Ali Najafi — a reformist mayor of the capital and a confidant of Hassan Rouahni — was handed over to Iran’s criminal court last month after confessing to killing his wife in a case that shocked the country.
The United States imposed new sanctions on Iran that target the country’s petrochemical industry due to its ties with the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the U.S. Treasury Department announced Friday.
“This action is a warning that we will continue to target holding groups and companies in the petrochemical sector and elsewhere that provide financial lifelines to the IRGC,” Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said in a statement.
The IRGC controls a significant part of the Iranian economy and is deeply imbedded in the financial system. In April, the U.S. designated the IRGC and its extraterritorial branch, the Quds Force, a foreign terrorist organization – the first time the U.S. has ever blacklisted an entire military branch.
According to the U.S. Treasury, Iran’s oil ministry last year awarded Khatam al-Anbiya, the IRGC’s economic and engineering arm, ten projects in the oil and petrochemical sectors worth $22 billion – accounting for more than four times the official budget of the IRGC.
The new sanctions specifically target the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (PGPIC) and extend to its 39 subsidiaries and “foreign-based sales agents,” including the UK-based NPC International and Philippines-based NPC Alliance Corporation that are controlled by PGPIC.
The company is Iran’s largest petrochemical holding group and accounts for 40 percent the country’s petrochemical-production capacity, as well as 50 percent of its petrochemical exports.
A senior U.S. official told Reuters that the move “would continue to have a very chilling effect on the prospects for any future recovery for the Iranian economy.” The petroleum and petrochemical industries “have been serving for the last 40 years as a kind of institutionalized slush fund for the IRGC,” the official added.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman slammed the new sanctions as another instance of “economic terrorism” and a continuation of U.S. “enmity” against the Islamic Republic.
http://www.thetower.org/7396-u-s-imposes-sanctions-on-iranian-petrochemicals-company-linked-to-irgc/
Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council and former chief of the IRGC Mohsen Rezaei has warned in a TV statement that if the US takes the smallest action against Iran, “the whole region will be set on fire,” Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
The spokesman of Islamic revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has denied recent reports and rumors that several commanders have fled or have been arrested.
Ramezan Sharif was quoted Tuesday by IRGC-run Fars news agency saying that the rumors are enemy tactics “using criminal social media networks and media” have taken advantage of recent changes in the IRGC command to spread rumors about top commanders, their families to the effect that some have fled the country or arrested as spies.
In recent weeks there were rumors that well-known commanders have either fled Iran or have been arrested. Radio Farda refrained from reporting mere rumors, but now the IRGC has officially responded to these reports.
Sahrif insisted that individuals named are “active in new positions and are seriously performing serving their mission and carrying out their duties” and there have even been report about their public appearances.
Some websites had reported that General Mohammad Tavalaee, the former deputy of IRGC strategic affairs was arrested during an attempt to leave the country. These reports claimed that he was detained for his role in an Israeli operation that stole Iran’s nuclear archives.
Other reports pointed to the arrest of a general identified only by his last name, Rabiee. There were reports in May that Mostafa Rabiee was replaced as deputy of IRGC inspectorate.
Other rumors spoke of General Ali Nassiri’s escape from the country. He was also replaced two months ago.
In past years there have been occasional reports of IRGC officers arrested and reportedly executed on charges of spying for Israel.
Iranian political activist Reza Alijani told Radio Farda in 2018 that two officials in charge of the Israel desk at the Intelligence Ministry and IRGC Intelligence Organization had been arrested and executed on the charges of spying for Israel.
He added in his interview with Radio Farda that another official had handed over the maps of IRGC garrisons in Tehran to Israeli spies against receiving $60,000.
The three generals named by Ramezan Sharif, as well as some others were not heard of after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Hossein Salami as the commander-in-chief of the IRGC in April.
Salami replaced many of IRGC’s middle ranking commanders, while changes at the top level were made by Khamenei himself. In two of his latest appointments, he appointed Ali Fadavi as the acting commander of IRGC, and Mohammad Reza Naqdi as the IRGC’s coordinating commander.
Although some of these appoints have been reported by the media, there are still many ambiguities about the details of the changes within the ranks of the IRGC.
Iran levels new threats against US as tensions escalate
Mohammad Javad Zarif said the US “cannot expect to stay safe” after starting what he called an American “economic war” against Iran.
“Mr. Trump himself has announced that the US has launched an economic war against Iran. The only solution for reducing tensions in this region is stopping that economic war,” he said.
“Whoever starts a war with us will not be the one who finishes it.”
Zarif made the remarks alongside visiting German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who was in Tehran to try to salvage Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
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Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights
Iranian foreign minister: U.S. ‘cannot expect to stay safe’ because of ‘economic war’
Zarif said that the U.S. “cannot expect to stay safe” after starting what he called an American “economic war” against Iran.
According to Zarif, “Mr. Trump himself has announced that the U.S. has launched an economic war against Iran. The only solution for reducing tensions in this region is stopping that economic war.”
“Whoever starts a war with us will not be the one who finishes it,” he added.
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Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights
