• 2021-01-15

    The US Department of Commerce issued an order on ensuring security in the field of information and communication technologies, according to which Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba are declared adversaries in this area.

  • 2021-01-15

    The Aerospace Forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps started the first stage of large-scale military exercise code-named of Payambar-e Azam 15 (The Great Prophet 15) in the Central Desert of Iran on Friday by implementing a combined missile and UAV operation

  • 2021-01-15

    • Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. (Israel has more capable ballistic missiles, but fewer in number and type.) Most were acquired from foreign sources, notably North Korea. The Islamic Republic is the only country to develop a 2,000-km missile without first having a nuclear weapons capability. Iran is still dependent on foreign suppliers for some key ingredients, components and equipment, but it has the technical and industrial capacity to develop long-range missiles, including an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM. The military utility of Iran’s liquid-fuel ballistic missiles is limited because of poor accuracy, so these missiles are not likely to be decisive if armed with conventional, chemical or biological warheads. But Tehran could use its missiles as a political or psychological weapon to terrorize an adversary’s cities and pressure its government. Iran’s indigenous Fateh-110 family of solid-fuel missiles have achieved the precision necessary to destroy military and critical-infrastructure targets reliably, as demonstrated during its January 2020 attack against U.S. forces stationed at Ayn al Asad airbase in Iraq using Zolfaghar missiles.  Iran should not be able to reliably strike Western Europe before 2022 or the United States before 2025—at the earliest.  Iran’s space program, which includes the successful launch of several small, crude satellites into low earth orbit using the Safir and Qased carrier rockets, proves the country’s growing ambitions and technical prowess. Since 2016, the larger, more powerful Simorgh failed to put a satellite into orbit during four launch attempts and remains a work in progress.

  • 2021-01-14

    The Israel Hayom report came a day after Likud minister Tzachi Hanegbi, considered an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened that Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear program if the United States rejoined the nuclear deal, as US President-elect Joe Biden has indicated he plans to do. “If the United States government rejoins the nuclear deal — and that seems to be the stated policy as of now — the practical result will be that Israel will again be alone against Iran, which by the end of the deal will have received a green light from the world, including the United States, to continue with its nuclear weapons program,” Hanegbi said in an interview with Kan news. “This of course we will not allow. We’ve already twice done what needed to be done, in 1981 against the Iraqi nuclear program and in 2007 against the Syrian nuclear program,” he said, referring to airstrikes on those two countries’ nuclear reactors.

  • 2021-01-13

    In late December, Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif signalled the Islamic Republic's readiness to defend its "security and vital interests" amid the US military buildup near the country's borders. He accused Washington of wasting hefty sums to repeatedly send B-52 bombers to the region instead of focusing on the fight against COVID-19. Hundreds of Iranian scientists have urged the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force to destroy any US warplanes, especially B-52 bombers, and American warships if they trepass Iran's borders, the FARS news agency reports. 

  • 2021-01-13

    A senior US intelligence official says recent airstrikes on eastern parts of Syria near the Iraqi border were carried out by Israel with intelligence provided by the United States. Syria's official news agency SANA said the air assaults were carried out on the city of Dayr al-Zawr and the town of al-Bukamal in the early hours of Wednesday. […] The US official with knowledge of the attack, who requested anonymity, told the Associated Press that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had discussed the raid with Yossi Cohen, chief of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, at a public meeting in a Washington restaurant on Monday. The official claimed the attack hit Iranian-linked targets, alleging the strikes targeted a series of warehouses used to store and stage Iranian weapons. Israel has already claimed to have hit Iranian targets and positions in Syria. Iranian officials have vehemently refuted the allegations, stressing that such "lies" will not impede Tehran's advisory assistance to Damascus in its anti-terror fight

  • 2021-01-12

    Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused Iran of acting as al-Qaida’s “new home base,” the outgoing secretary of state’s latest attempt to advance a dubious claim that could justify a military strike against Iran or sabotage President-elect Joe Biden’s diplomatic efforts. The administration has tried several times to tie Iran to al-Qaida, a claim that has been called politicized or an outright lie. Pompeo made the latest allegation with less than two weeks left in office, and did not offer any new evidence to back it up. 

  • 2021-01-08

    Qatar’s reassurance that the deal with Riyadh will not alter its relation with Iran came after Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman railed against Iran during the summit, in which the emir of Qatar was present. The Saudi crown prince told the summit that they are “in utmost need to unite” their efforts to advance their region and confront the challenges surrounding them. Mohammad bin Salman warned of what he called “the threats posed by the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile program, its destructive sabotage projects as well as the terrorist and sectarian activities adopted by Iran and its proxies to destabilize the security and stability in the region.” The summiteers also issued a statement against Iran that echoed the Saudi accusations. The statement elicited a strong response from Iran. 

  • 2021-01-08

    On December 17, 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi met in Ankara. During the joint press conference, President Erdoğan said that Turkey and Iraq have agreed to continue fighting against their "common enemies," namely the PKK, ISIS, and the Gülen movement. During the press conference it was also highlighting that Turkey and Iraq can easily achieve the $20 billion trade volume target. Lately, tension in Iran's relations with Turkey was given public expression in the Iranian media. The Iranian regime is alarmed by the expansionist ambitions of Erdoğan's Sunni Islamist government, which come at the expense of Shi'ite Islamist Iran and its resistance axis. 

  • 2021-01-07

    The year 2020 was a tough one for Iran due to the efforts of the US government. Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was assassination by the US government, the very government which prevented medicine and masks from entering Iran amid the coronavirus pandemic. Iranian professor Fakhrizadeh was also assassinated which apparently was carried out by Israel and with the green light of the US government again. The White house in transition released two New Year statements. While outgoing president Trump reflected on what he called his historic victories, President-elect Joe Biden looked to the future with plans for improvements, such as distributing COVID vaccines more quickly. Trump’s accomplishments include frequently ignoring the severity of the pandemic, and at times even the science behind virus transmission. Earlier in the year 2020, he presented Iran with a New Year’s gift, the lifeless body of its anti-Daesh General Soleimani. It was on January the 3rd that Soleimani was assassinated by a US drone-strike in Baghdad. And then towards the year-end a nuclear scientist, Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated. In-between assassinations, Iran grappled with, and is in fact still grappling with, the coronavirus like the rest of the world, but while under the harshest ever sanctions imposed by the US. 

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