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All in News
◢ A payment mechanism the EU hopes will save the Iran nuclear deal by bypassing US sanctions is ready, diplomats said Monday, but is held up by disagreements among European countries. The "Special Purpose Vehicle" is being put together by Germany, France and Britain, the European signatories to the 2015 accord that curbed Tehran's nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions reilef.
◢ Iran has accused France of being a destabilizing force in the region after its foreign minister threatened new sanctions against Tehran over its missile program. "The Islamic republic has always called for the strengthening of peace and stability in the region," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement released overnight Friday.
◢ Iran's foreign ministry on Tuesday deplored Germany's decision to ban Iranian airline Mahan air from its airports describing the move as "hasty and unjustifiable.” Iran said it hope Germany will reconsider its decision. The rescinding of Mahan Air's flight permits to Germany is a hasty, unjustifiable act," the ministry said in a statement.
◢ Russia on Tuesday slammed a planned US-Polish conference on peace and security in the Middle East as "counterproductive" because of its focus on countering Iran, and said it would not attend. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced plans for the major conference in Warsaw on February 13 and 14 to be attended by ministers from a dozen countries.
◢ Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Maciej Lang met in Tehran on Monday with his Iranian counterpart in an effort to solve a dispute over a conference his country is to host. Lang described as "constructive" his talks with Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi over the jointly organized conference with the United States on peace and security in the Middle East.
◢ Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday said resistance against new technologies is "outdated" as he once again criticized the judiciary's blocking of social media. "Resisting new technologies and modern developments is an outdated approach," Rouhani said in a speech broadcast by state television.
◢ Germany plans to ban Iranian airline Mahan Air from its airports, media reported Monday, in an escalation of sanctions adopted by the European Union against Iran over attacks on opponents in the bloc. "The Federal Aviation Office (LBA) will this week suspend the operating license of Iranian airline Mahan," reported Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
◢ Iraq could bear the brunt if conflict intensifies between Iran and the United States, a think-tank study said Wednesday. The International Crisis Group, which researches ways to prevent war, interviewed officials around the world including Iran for an extensive report on the state of the 2015 denuclearization accord between Tehran and major powers.
◢ French auto giant Groupe PSA, which makes the Citroen and Peugeot brands, reported record vehicle sales Tuesday as the acquisition of General Motors' Opel unit helped offset a sharp downturn in key markets China and Iran. PSA sold 3.88 million vehicles, up 6.8 percent from 2017 when it acquired the Opel business which includes British-based Vauxhall.
◢ Iran launched a satellite criticized by the United States as a breach of a UN resolution on Tuesday but it failed to reach orbit, the telecommunications minister said. Iran's arch foe Israel swiftly condemned the launch, which it charged was cover for the testing of the first stage of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
◢ The White House demanded that the military draft plans for strikes on Iran after attacks in Iraq last year, sparking concern at the Pentagon and State Department, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The report said the move came after a mortar attack launched by an Iran-linked group on the Baghdad diplomatic quarters home to the US embassy in September. No one was hurt by the shells, which landed in an open lot.
◢ A military cargo plane overshot a runway, crashed and caught fire during a botched landing near the Iranian capital Tehran, killing 15 people, the army said Monday. The plane was carrying meat from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan when it crashed near the capital Tehran, the army said in a statement.
◢ Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met with his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad on Sunday for wide-ranging talks, including on US sanctions against Tehran. The visit came just days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a surprise stop on his regional tour to urge Iraq to stop relying on Iran for gas and electricity imports.
◢ Iran's foreign ministry summoned Poland's top diplomat in the country to protest its decision to host what it called an "anti-Iranian" summit, a spokesman said Sunday. Poland's charge d'affaires was summoned to "protest the anti-Iranian so-called peace and security conference," ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said on his Telegram channel.
◢ The United States is organizing an international summit in Poland next month, focusing on Iran's Middle Eastern influence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News. The event will "focus on Middle East stability and peace and freedom and security here in this region, and that includes an important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilizing influence," the top US diplomat said.
◢ US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vowed Thursday the United States and its allies would chase all Iranian troops from Syria, and urged Middle East nations to forge a common stand against Tehran. "It's time for old rivalries to end, for the sake of the greater good of the region," said Pompeo at a keynote address in Cairo.
◢ Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said some US officials are "first-class idiots" in a speech on Wednesday. "Some US officials pretend that they are mad. Of course I don't agree with that, but they are first-class idiots," he said in the speech in Tehran, quoted on his official Twitter feed.
◢ Iran was likely behind the murders of two Dutch citizens believed to be dissidents against the regime in Tehran, Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said Tuesday. The Dutch secret service "has strong indications that Iran was involved in the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin in Almere 2015 and in The Hague in 2017," Blok said in a letter to parliament.
◢ Iran will boost trade with India as the European Union struggles to find a way to circumvent a fresh US embargo on Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Tuesday. Brussels is working on a payment mechanism to keep financial transactions flowing with Iran, after the US ditched the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran earlier this year and reintroduced a raft of sanctions on the country.
◢ Iran's parliament will investigate claims by a labor protest leader that he was tortured in prison following strikes at a sugar factory, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported on Sunday. Alireza Rahimi, a member of parliament's presiding board, said his request for an investigation had been accepted by speaker Ali Larijani, according to ISNA.
