Wednesday, December 09, 2020

12/09 Links Pt1: No labels: Israel’s new Gulf partners seem happy to do business with settlements; Beitar Jerusalem, the unlikely symbol of Israeli-Arab unity

From Ian:

No labels: Israel’s new Gulf partners seem happy to do business with settlements
In November 2015, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates dedicated a long editorial to the European Union’s newly issued guidelines about special labels for products from Israeli settlements.

“The decision by the 28-nation bloc has come after months of procrastination, but evidently underscores the bloc’s anger over Israel’s continued expansion of settlements on territory that Palestinians seek for their future state,” Gulf Today wrote at the time, calling for sanctions against the Jewish state. “Inaction on the part of the world community would be deemed by Israel as support for its oppressive actions.”

Four years later, after the European Court of Justice ruled that products made in Israeli settlements must be labeled as such, the Sharjah-based daily ran another editorial about the issue, hailing the judges’ “appropriate and welcome decision.”

Blind support by the US administration “has emboldened Israel to embark on a dangerous path,” the paper went on. The November 12, 2019, article ended with a call for all European countries to “implement what is a legal and political obligation regarding labeling of products.”

Fast forward 12 months. Israel and the UAE have signed the so-called Abraham Accords, quickly establishing diplomatic ties and vibrant trade relations. Emirati supermarkets proudly display Israeli products, apparently including some made in Israeli settlements — but no one is talking about labeling.

In this new era of peace, the idea of distinguishing between goods from Israel proper and those that come from areas Israel gained control over in 1967 is no longer in vogue in the Arab Gulf.

On Monday, Tura Winery, which is based in the West Bank settlement of Rehelim but proudly labels its products as being “from the Land of Israel,” inked a deal with Dubai-based FAM Holding.


Beitar Jerusalem, the unlikely symbol of Israeli-Arab unity
We welcome the news that Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, a member of the United Arab Emirates’ royal family, has purchased a 50 percent stake in the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club, and congratulate him with the Arabic term, “Mabruk!”

“A historic and exciting day for Beitar Jerusalem,” the capital’s Premier League team tweeted to its followers, noting that the deal had been signed by the Israeli co-owner, Moshe Hogeg, and Sheikh Hamad on Monday – three months after Israel and the UAE established diplomatic ties as part of the US-led Abraham Accords.

Perhaps now, Beitar – which is infamous for its refusal to sign an Arab player and the anti-Arab chants of some of its hardcore fans, known as “La Familia” – can shed its racist image and become a sporting model of Jewish-Muslim teamsmanship.

Beitar’s announcement quoted Sheikh Hamad as saying: “I am thrilled to be a partner in such a glorious club that I have heard so much about and in such a great city, the capital of Israel and one of the holiest cities in the world.”

Pledging to invest NIS 300 million in the team over the next decade, he said this represented “the fruits of peace and brotherhood between the nations” and would “bring people together through sport.”

Saying he would strive to put together the best team possible, he concluded with the fans’ famous chant, “Yalla, Beitar!”

Hogeg said, “On the eve of Hanukkah, Beitar’s menorah is lit in a new and exciting light. Together, we all march the club to new days of coexistence, achievements and brotherhood for the sake of our club, community and Israeli sports.”
Israel Advocacy Movement: The Middle East past and present (Israel, UAE, Bahrain)



Russian envoy rebuked for blaming regional instability on Israel-Arab conflict
The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday summoned Russia’s ambassador to Israel to rebuke him for saying the Jewish state’s conflict with the Palestinians and other Arab entities was the main cause of instability in the Middle East, rather than Iran.

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post published Tuesday, Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov also lashed out at Israel for targeting arms shipments for Hezbollah and questioned whether the Lebanese terror group dug tunnels under the Israel-Lebanon border.

The Foreign Ministry said Viktorov was “seriously reprimanded” for his comments by Alon Bar, the ministry’s political director.

“Bar rejected out of hand the comments published in the interview and emphasized that they are inconsistent with the reality in the Middle East,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

Bar also said regional issues, “especially the Iranian threat and terror groups who do Iran’s bidding, particularly Hezbollah,” should be discussed through diplomatic channels, “with reference to the reality and threats which Israel is dealing with and not outrageous and dangerous false visions,” according to the statement.

The Foreign Ministry said Viktorov told Bar that he intends to send a letter to the newspaper, claiming some of the quotes attributed to him weren’t accurate.

There was no reaction to the dressing down from Russia’s embassy in Israel or the Russian foreign ministry.


AIPAC says not opposed to US arms deal to UAE amid progressive backlash
The AIPAC pro-Israel lobby group said Tuesday that it will not oppose Washington’s planned $23 billion arms deal to the United Arab Emirates.

“We do not oppose the proposed arms sale to the UAE, given the peace agreement reached between Israel and the UAE as well as the agreement reached between the US and Israel to ensure Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) will not be adversely impacted by the sale,” AIPAC’s spokesman Marshall Wittmann said in a statement that was first reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

AIPAC’s opposition would have marked an additional complication to the Trump administration’s plans to rush the arms deal through before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20. The sale is already facing opposition from largely progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups over the UAE’s military conduct in Yemen and Libya.

The decision puts the more centrist AIPAC at odds with the more liberal, pro-Israel lobby J Street, which announced its opposition to the weapons sale on Monday.

Israel and the UAE signed a US-brokered normalization deal in September. Last month, the Trump administration formally notified Congress of its plan to sell 50 stealth F-35 fighter jets, 18 advanced armed Reaper drone systems and a package of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions to the UAE.
UAE wants more than trade with Israel, it wants to create new model of 'peace, prosperity, stability' for a 'New Middle East,' says UAE Foreign Minister
After decades of catastrophic terrorism, war, instability and poverty in the Middle East, it is urgently time to take an entirely new approach, and the United Arab Emirates wants to help lead the way.

That is the point of the Abraham Accords, and of the UAE’s “360-degree” strategy of reform, economic growth, modernization, tolerance towards other religious faiths and regional peace-making, says UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash.

“The Abraham Accords have the potential to change the region strategically with goals of peace, prosperity and stability,” Gargash told me. “We’re very excited. It really represents the seed for us to work for a new region, for a new Middle East, and hopefully, together, we will be successful.”

Last week, Emiratis celebrated “National Day,” marking their independence from the British in 1971 under the leadership of the country’s visionary founder, Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan.

On Dec. 2, 2021 the UAE will celebrate 50 years of freedom, and its leaders are hitting the accelerator both to advance bigger, history-making reforms and to “set a positive model” for the Middle East and the world.

Two years ago, when I brought the first delegation of Evangelicals leaders ever invited by the government of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) – the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the son of the late founder, and now the de facto leader of the country – told my colleagues and me that he was “ready to make peace.”

Now that MBZ has courageously kept his promise, I am here for a week meeting with government, business and faith leaders to better understand the tectonic changes going on not just here but throughout the region.

As part of my visit, Gargash graciously invited me to come to his lovely home in the suburbs of Dubai, the nation’s commercial capital, for a one-hour, sit-down, on-the-record interview.
UAE shipping chief says initial trade with Israel could be worth over $5 billion
Initial bilateral trade between Israel and the United Arab Emirates could be worth $5 billion, an Emirati shipping leader said Monday at an event with Israeli businesspeople in Dubai.

Ports in Israel will be valuable as a link for shipping between the Middle East and Europe, said Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chairman of DP World, one of the largest international port operators. The firm is in talks to jointly take over Haifa port with an Israeli company and has inked a deal with one of Israel’s leading banks.

“We estimate at least $5 billion of trade will happen between our countries in the beginning and this will grow,” bin Sulayem said at the inaugural UAE-Israel Future Digital Technology Summit, part of this week’s Gitex technology conference in Dubai.

“The port facilities [in Israel] will allow us to link our ports in Europe to the Middle East,” he said.

The Abraham Accords, signed by Israel, the UAE and Bahrain on September 15, normalized relations between the countries, opening up commercial ties.

The state-owned DP World, based in Dubai, operates the kingdom’s Jebel Ali Port, the largest and busiest port in the Middle East.

An Israeli delegation attended the Gitex summit this week in Dubai for the first time. The annual event is one of the world’s largest tech summits, and the only major one taking place in-person this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The event was significantly smaller than previous years due to COVID-19, but Israel’s participation and several events focusing on Israel-UAE collaboration gave this year’s Gitex a boost.


UAE, Israeli Groups Partner to Conserve Houbara Birds

Report: Israel urging Congress to pass Sudan immunity bill
Israel has been reaching out to US senators to pass the legislation that grants Sudan immunity from future terror-related lawsuits, Axios reported on Monday, citing a Congressional source. Sudan agreed to sign a normalization deal with Jerusalem in October.

Israeli officials are concerned that the normalization process will be put on hold if the deal falls through, Axios reported, adding that it could negatively impact future normalization deals with other Arab states.

According to Axios, two weeks ago, when an Israeli delegation visited Khartoum along with adviser to the US ambassador to Israel Aryeh Lightstone, the chairman of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan reportedly asked Israelis to assist with the immunity bill in Washington.

Last week The New York Times reported that Sudan had marked the end of 2020 as the deadline to be taken off Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

"The whole thing felt forced all along by an administration that wanted to use a terrorism designation as a political tool to try to get normalization with Israel," Director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security Ilan Goldenberg told The New York Times.
First doses of Pfizer vaccine arrive ahead of mass inoculation program
Israel’s first batch of Pfizer vaccines was flown in on Wednesday as the country began to gear up for a mass vaccination effort to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.

The DHL plane landed from Brussels carrying a cargo of between 3,000 and 4,000 doses of the vaccine in an initial delivery, with hundreds of thousands more set to arrive on Thursday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech at Ben Gurion Airport, said that he would be the first person in Israel to receive the coronavirus vaccine as part of a campaign to encourage inoculation.

“What’s important to me is that people of Israel get vaccinated. I believe in this vaccine. I want the people of Israel to get vaccinated and so I will be first,” Netanyahu said.

“I have been the prime minister of Israel for quite a few years, and this is one of the most exciting moments,” he said. “I worked hard for long months with the Health Ministry and other organizations to find a solution to the pandemic and now you see the forklift unloading the first vaccines of millions that will come for the people of Israel.”

According to Channel 12, the first shipment is something of a pilot program, to practice the transit and storage of the vaccines, which must be stored at -70°C (-94°F) and used within five days of their removal from cold storage.

On Tuesday evening Netanyahu spoke with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and thanked him for the assistance in securing the vaccine as well as reaching an agreement on further supplies, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement without providing any further details on quantities.
Israel Adds 1,837 New Coronavirus Infections, Positive Test Rate at 2.8%
Israel added 1,837 new COVID-19 coronavirus infections on Monday, the Health Ministry reported Tuesday morning.

With over 67,000 tests done in the past 24 hours, the positive test rate was at 2.8%.

Israel’s death toll throughout the pandemic stood at 2,924 as of Tuesday morning, with three new fatalities added on Monday.

With almost 14,000 active cases in the country, 562 Israelis are now in hospitals.

Out of those, 315 are said to be in a serious state, including 102 patients in a critical condition.

At least 107 patients require artificial lung ventilation, with Israel’s total cumulative sum of infections throughout the pandemic at 347,331.

On Monday, Israel’s coronavirus cabinet approved new restrictions to curb the spread of the disease.

Starting from Wednesday, Israel could go on a nighttime curfew, with Israelis barred from venturing outside past 8 or 10 pm, if the measure is approved by the government.
West Bank workers entering Israel will be required to test for COVID-19
Due to the rapid spread of coronavirus throughout the West Bank and the increasing morbidity rates in the area and in Israel as a whole, the Defense Ministry has decided to start imposing mandatory coronavirus tests in border crossings for work permit holders entering Israel from the West Bank, COGAT spokesperson's office announced on Wednesday.

Workers entering Israel who refuse to be tested would be prohibited from entering the country. The Home Front Command's "Alon" coronavirus HQ and the Civil Administration in COGAT will be tasked with managing the tests.

Authorities have had trouble grasping the entire scope of morbidity rates in the West Bank for several reasons, the main issues being the lack of enforcement in the area and the phenomenon of fake medical documents becoming more popular and reaching Israel.

Last month, it was reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering temporarily closing crossings between Israel and the West Bank altogether in an attempt to halt the spread of COVID-19, in light of "the dramatic jump in morbidity in the Palestinian Authority," Netanyahu said at the time.

Palestinian Authority officials were also considering banning Arab-Israelis from entering the West Bank as part of their efforts to stem the spread of the virus. The Palestinian officials noted the increasing phenomenon of Arab-Israelis entering the West Bank and holding weddings - especially in Jericho and Bethlehem, the officials noted.
Palestinian Incitement Against Israeli Journalists
The Palestinian journalists' group is angry not only because two Israeli reporters visited Ramallah. It is upset because the reporters dared to reveal an inconvenient truth: that Palestinians are enjoying themselves and that, despite the outbreak of the coronavirus, the economy in Ramallah is doing well.

This truth goes against the Palestinian leadership's official and long-standing propaganda line: that the Palestinians are "suffering" as a result of the bad economy and therefore the world needs to continue providing them with hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

The only journalists the Palestinian leadership tolerates are those who do not question its policies and decisions and who do not ask embarrassing questions.

Will the International Federation of Journalists [the largest in the world; it represents more than 600,000 media workers from 187 organizations in 146 countries] condemn the Palestinians for threatening Israeli journalists on a regular basis? ... International organizations rarely see any evil on the Palestinian side. The only culprit, for them, is Israel. The silence of the IFJ and other international media organizations and human rights groups is nothing short of a green light to Palestinians to physically attack the next Israeli reporter they see on the streets of Bethlehem or Ramallah.
IDF court okays community service plea deal for soldier who killed Palestinian
A military court approved a plea bargain on Wednesday which gives a soldier three months of community service for the wrongful shooting of two Palestinians, one of whom died.

According to military prosecutors, Alaa Ghiyada, 38, was shot in the stomach multiple times by the soldier in March on the side of a road near Bethlehem. The soldier, who has not been identified publicly, said that he had incorrectly believed Ghiyada was throwing rocks at passersby.

Ahmad Manasrah, 23, who arrived on the scene and attempted to help Ghiyada, was also shot by the same soldier and died of his wounds. All sides now agree no stones were thrown and that both Manasrah and Ghiyada were innocent.

Under the plea bargain, the soldier pled guilty to the military’s equivalent of negligent homicide and was sentenced to three months of unpaid military service, probation, and a demotion to private. The soldier was not charged at all for shooting Ghiyada.

The plea bargain infuriated Ghiyada’s and Manasrah’s families, who deemed the sentence far too light.

“The army is sending a clear message that soldiers who kill or wound Palestinians won’t be punished,” said the families’ attorney, Shlomo Lecker.

Dozens of former senior military officials disagreed, however. In numerous affidavits submitted to the court, former generals defended the soldier’s actions as “done without malice… as he was convinced that he was preventing a terror attack.”
PMW: The antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is “an important book,” says PA TV
Already in 1921, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was exposed as a malicious antisemitic forgery, still Hitler disseminated it in the 1930s to generate hatred of Jews. The significant detail that the book is a forgery has not stopped the Palestinian Authority from presenting it to its people as an authentic Jewish document, describing in precise detail the Jews’ plan to subjugate humanity. It was published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, feeding Antisemitism everywhere it was published.

Now PA TV has again presented it not only as a true work but an “important book” in an educational PA TV filler about a Lebanese historian who translated it. The historian named Ajaj Nuwayhed, who PA TV describes as having made a deep “cultural and intellectual contribution,” was quoted in the introduction to the second edition of his translation of The Protocols from 1980, as follows:
"When we asked for the author’s [Nuwayhed's] permission to print a second edition we asked him to write a new introduction, and he responded: 'What has changed in the Zionist plan such that we should change the first edition's introduction?' Between the two editions a period of 15 years have passed that were packed with events constituting an irrefutable indication that everything that appears in the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion] has been done by the elders of the Zionist enemy, and emphasizing that the enemy is determined to continue his criminal plan."

The following is how PA TV in its educational filler describes this Lebanese disseminator of Antisemitism:


PA vows not to change terrorist salaries into social welfare
PA vows not to change terrorist salaries into social welfare, released terrorists are absorbed into PA Sec. Forces

Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr: The prisoners are a sacred issue that can’t be touched. Let no one think that it will be transferred to the other institutions – the humanitarian ones or the [PA Ministry of] Social Affairs. This is emphasized by [PA] President [Abbas] at every meeting. Currently, we have begun to absorb the released prisoners into the [PA] Security Forces and the PA’s institutions... This ensures their right as devoted Palestinian fighters, and not as released prisoners who are receiving their salary while being at home...The number [of released prisoners] grew until it reached about 7,300 prisoners. Allah willing, we will absorb them within a short period, and when a prisoner retires, he will do so with a pension of a [PA] governmental ministry or of a civilian institution. Even a prisoner who wants to retire [early], will do so with a full payment, because the rights to which the prisoner is eligible and the salary that he receives are for life... These are [things that] President [Abbas] emphasizes that are not to be touched.

[Facebook page of the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Nov. 27, 2020]




Trapped in the coastal enclave, Gaza’s ‘only Iranian’ wants to go home
There is only one known Iranian in Gaza — an aging former bodyguard to longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who dreams only of returning home, but finds himself stuck in the enclave.

“I just want to get out of here and die in Iran,” Qassem Sheyasi — known by his Arabic nom de guerre Abu Hashem — told AFP, making it clear that he is no longer in the Gaza Strip by choice.

Feeble, impoverished and sitting on a mattress laid on the floor, Abu Hashem flicked ash from his cigarette into a tin can with a gentle tap of his index finger as he recounted how he became trapped.

Long before he found himself forced to beg outside Gaza’s mosques on Fridays, Abu Hashem was a young Tehran resident drawn to the Palestinian cause.

He said he left the Iranian capital 40 years ago to join Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, then based in Beirut, which was one of several armed actors in Lebanon’s civil war.

“In Beirut, I met Abu Ammar [Arafat], who asked me to stay with him,” said Abu Hashem, who sometimes sprinkles his Arabic with Farsi.
MEMRI: Russian Commentator Akopov: Iran Will Not Be Provoked By Fakhrizadeh Assassination To Start A World War, Because Its Deserved Victory Is Assured Without A Major Conflict
The official Russian response to the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, reputedly the head of Iran's nuclear weapons drive condemned the attack but expected Iran to act with restraint and not succumb to provocations. The foreign ministry announcement condemning the attack stated " We call on all sides to refrain from moves that could escalate tensions." [1] The announcement also did not assign blame to any specific party. Petr Akopov, the lead commentator for Russia's RIA Novosti departed from this pattern in an article for Ria.ru. True, Akopov also believed that Iran should not allow itself to be provoked by the assassination, but his article was a full-throated testimonial to Iran, a country that had valiantly resisted Western globalization and materialism and had successfully welded religion and democracy. Iran, according to Akopov, had successfully rallied the Muslim world to resist the United States and Israel, the true terrorists as proven by the assassinations of Qasem Soleimani and now Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The main reason why Iran should resist the provocation argues Akopov was that it was winning on all fronts. The US was in retreat from the Middle East, and would be shortly consigning Israel to its fate.

Akopov may not be representative of Russian thinking on this issue, (and the last time this article was accessed, down votes outnumbered up votes by more than ten to one), but he represents a strand of Russian thought that intuitively sides with anti-Western Muslim leaders both in Turkey and Iran.[2]

Akopov's article follows below: [3]

Israel And The Americans Are The Real Terrorists But Can Act With Impunity

"How would you call a state, which conducts terrorist attacks in other countries, kills unwanted people, whose armed forces periodically (without any invitations or provocations) attack other countries? - A terrorist country. What if this country also has nuclear weapons? – a terrorist with an atomic bomb.

"Should such a state be punished? Well, of course, if not by counter mirror actions (based on the principle of 'an eye for an eye') or military invasion (which is impossible because of the risk of nuclear war), then by various international sanctions, by the inclusion of this state in the list of countries - sponsors of terrorism. After all, terrorism is the main enemy and threat to humanity: this, at least, that is what they have told us in the past two decades, since the September 11 attacks.
Satellite imagery points to Iran moving Natanz underground - NYT
Satellite imagery shows that Iran is moving its key Natanz nuclear site underground, according to a New York Times report. Following the mysterious July explosion, which started a fire at the Natanz facility damaging key centrifuges, the Times' Visual Investigations team began tracking construction and repairs at the site.

On December 9, reporter Christoph Koettl reported that "tunnel entrances for underground construction are [now[ visible under a ridge in the mountain foothills south of the Natanz facility, about 140 miles south of Tehran."

The NYT worked closely with Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, to break down the images and identify any anomalies or points of interest or importance.

"The new facility is likely to be a far more secure location for centrifuge assembly – it is located far from a road and the ridge offers significant overburden that would protect the facility from air attack," Lewis told the Times.
No proof of Kylie Moore-Gilbert ties to Israel, ex-Aussie defense minister says
There is no indication Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the Australian-British academic recently released after two years in an Iranian prison, had connections to Israel, Australian former defense minister Christopher Pyne said on Wednesday.

“I don’t believe there is any evidence of her having any links to Israel,” said Pyne, who was defense minister when Moore-Gilbert was imprisoned on espionage charges in 2018.

Pyne’s remarks come several days after Iranian state-run TV accused Moore-Gilbert, 33, of being a Mossad spy working with a Bahraini MP. The televised segment, as part of a misinformation campaign to justify keeping her in custody for over 800 days, showed photos the program claimed were of Moore-Gilbert in Jerusalem and an IDF training camp in Haifa, as well as an Israeli passport purportedly belonging to her husband. Moore-Gilbert had been sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was allowed to return to Australia in late November, in exchange for three Iranians who had been in Thai prisons due to their involvement in the 2012 Bangkok bombings targeting Israeli diplomats.

Albert Dadon and Christopher Pyne at the 2019 Leadership DialogueAlbert Dadon and Christopher Pyne at the 2019 Leadership Dialogue Pyne said “we’re very pleased and have done a lot of work behind the scenes to get her out of Iran and out of prison.”

“There is no evidence [she] is guilty of any crimes and certainly Australia rejected the espionage charges against her,” Pyne added. “We believe that her capture and charges were not genuine and should never have been allowed to happen.”
Don’t Let Iran Get Away With Hostage-Taking
One year ago today, I was released from Iran as an American hostage in a prisoner swap. I went to Tehran in 2016 with little knowledge of its contemporary political reality. After a 40-month ordeal in the notorious Evin Prison, I left the country with the hard-learned knowledge that the Iranian regime is obdurately hostile toward the West, especially the U.S., and loathes diplomacy.

This year, as Thanksgiving approached, I could not help thinking of other hostages still held in Iran — at least 11 foreign nationals whose names are known to the public. Eight of them are in prison and three others are under house arrest.

Two days before Thanksgiving, I learned that the death sentence of my fellow inmate, Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmad Reza Djalali, has been reactivated, ostensibly a gambit against Europe ahead of the trial of an Iranian diplomat implicated in a thwarted attack in 2018. The Iranian judiciary informed Djalali’s lawyer that the sentence would be carried out very soon.

On Thanksgiving eve, Iran’s release of Australian scholar Kylie Moore-Gilbert made international headlines. News footage showed that three Iranian convicts of a botched assassination attempt in Thailand arrived in Tehran, receiving a hero’s welcome by Iranian officials in the airport as Moore-Gilbert departed. Australian media lauded her release as a “diplomatic feat well done.”

The scene of Moore-Gilbert waiting in the VIP lounge of Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport reminded me about how I myself anxiously awaited my departure from the country in that very place. While I am elated to see her returning home, a somber question looms large against the backdrop of Djalali’s imminent sentence: Why does the Iranian regime keep taking foreigners hostage as political leverage?
Some of Those Involved in Killing of Iranian Nuclear Scientist Arrested, Official Says
Some of those involved in the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month have been arrested, an adviser to the Iranian parliament speaker said on Tuesday, according to the semi-official news agency ISNA.

Iran has blamed Israel for the Nov. 27 killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was seen by Western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the killing.

“The perpetrators of this assassination, some of whom have been identified and even arrested by the security services, will not escape justice,” ISNA quoted adviser Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as telling Iran’s Arabic-language Al Alam TV.

“Were the Zionists (Israel) able to do this alone and without the cooperation of, for example, the American (intelligence) service or another service? They certainly could not do that,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

Iran has given contradictory details of Fakhrizadeh’s death in a daytime Nov. 27 ambush on his car on a highway near the capital Tehran.

A senior Revolutionary Guards commander has said the killing was carried out remotely with artificial intelligence and a machine gun equipped with a “satellite-controlled smart system.”

Witnesses earlier told state television that a truck had exploded before a group of gunmen opened fire on Fakhrizadeh’s car.


Iran TV apologizes for calling Roger Waters 'political expert'
Iran's state television on Tuesday issued a correction after calling Pink Floyd's Roger Waters a "political expert" when airing his comments on US President-elect Joe Biden.

The broadcaster earlier in the day showed part of the rock icon's interview with Russian channel RT, presenting him as an analyst who believes "Biden cannot be trusted." US President Donald Trump's re-election "would've been worse for everyone in the world, but that doesn't make Biden a good candidate," Waters said.

"Biden [is a] warmongering servant of the oligarchy that rules the United States of America and will continue to be so for however long he remains the president of the United States. He's not to be trusted on anything," Waters added.

State TV said on its Telegram channel that Waters was "wrongly called a political expert" during the morning news and instead described him as someone with "activities in the field of socio-political music."



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