‘Wrestling Diplomacy’ Pinned Down Over 'Death To America' Slogan

In a tweet on Wednesday, Antony Blinken said the bureau will benefit from his extensive experience, “as we advance a foreign policy that delivers for the American people”.

Toloui was the assistant secretary of the treasury for international finance and development in the Obama administration and was appointed as the Biden’s administration nominee for assistant state secretary on July 30, 2021. He was confirmed by the Senate on December 16, 2021.

The purpose of the bureau is paving the way for American companies doing business in global markets, and leveraging economic tools to deny financing to terrorists, human rights abusers, and corrupt officials.

He is professor of finance at Stanford University, and his research focuses on international economic policy, financial crises, and the economic impact of artificial intelligence.

As Blinken’s point person for negotiating business agreements, Toloui’s expertise can be used to curb Iran’s network of money laundering and economic support for terrorist groups in the world as well as in the trade war with China.

Toloui was born and raised in Iowa and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and an MPhil from Oxford University.

According to the BBC on Thursday, the alleged foreign interference campaign ran an elaborate network across multiple social media platforms posing as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish news group that supports extreme right-wing groups. The aim appears to have been sowing discord and inflame tensions with Palestinian.

The Israeli disinformation watchdog FakeReporter uncovered the group's Iranian origin, saying it sought to fuel "religious war" by amplifying "fear, hatred and chaos".

The network, which remains active on the messaging channel Telegram, recirculated articles and posts supporting far-right politicians, encouraged protests and promoted anti-government and anti-Arab sentiment.

Facebook says the accounts were part of attempts to reappear after it took down "a small Iranian influence operation" last March, adding that Iran-based groups are persistent and well-resourced.

The social media network called the Aduk -or strictly religious - was created as a Hebrew acronym of "Virtual religious union for the religious community".

The network was well versed in the Israeli culture and politics and went to extensive lengths to look genuine. They had created a page for a fictitious bakery in an ultra-Orthodox Israeli town, and in another case stolen the online identity of an ultra-religious Jewish man from Russia who died four years ago.

The unprecedented first three assaults, including a missile attack on Monday during a visit by Israel's president, were launched by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis in an escalation with a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which includes the UAE.

The Houthis have not taken responsibility for the latest attack, which was claimed by a little-known group calling itself the "True Promise Brigades", according to US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which follows jihadist websites.

The group's only other claim was in January 2021, when it said it launched a drone at Saudi Arabia.

If confirmed, the claim by the "True Promise Brigade" could indicate an upswing in violence involving militias seeking to help Iran oppose Western and Gulf Arab adversaries, according to some analysts.

"If Alwiyat al-Waad al-Haq came out of hibernation and did launch drones at the UAE ... then this was likely an Iran-directed or at very least Iran-tolerated operation," Michael Knights at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy said in a Twitter post, using the group's Arabic name.

Sunni Muslim Gulf powers have called on global powers trying to salvage a nuclear pact with Iran to also tackle Shi'ite Iran's regional proxies and missiles program.

Iran's foreign minister discussed Yemen with his Emirati counterpart by telephone on Wednesday.

The UAE largely reduced its military presence in Yemen in 2019 and has been engaging with Tehran under de-escalation efforts largely driven by economic priorities.

Parliament (Majles) Research Center has attested that 90 percent of the government's budget for all media will go to the state television IRIB (the Islamic Republic Broadcasting Organization) next year.

In a rare development the parliamentary institution has called for reducing IRIB's budget and urged the national broadcaster to return to the treasury some of its hefty advertising revenues, as its audience is declining. The Parliament is dominated by conservatives and supporters of Supreme Leader Khamenei, but it is making demands from an institution controlled by him.

According to the research center, IRIB has annual advertising revenues of nearly 140 trillion rials ($560 million). This is apart from its share of the government budget, which is equal to the annual payroll taxes of all government employees.

IRIB will receive 50 trillion rials ($200 million) from the government budget, which is 42 percent higher than last year. But this is not all that IRIB gets. Khamenei whose office directly supervises IRIB's operations and appoints its chairman, gives hard currency from the country's foreign currency reserves to the IRIB. The media conglomerate also benefits from advertising revenues and refuses to send the money back to the treasury according to law, according to media reports including one written by Homa Hosseini for Rouydad24 website.

100%

The report by parliament’s research arm is an odd event in which one hardliner organization calls for the reduction of the budget of another hardliner organization. But ever-growing funds allocated to the IRIB and religious organizations including seminaries during the past two years have been so controversial that even the country's hardliners and staunch supporters of the regime could not ignore them.

It has been revealed during the past two years that parts of the seminary such as the Al-Mustafa School which trains young clerics from foreign countries receives the lion's share of Iran's cultural budget. Other religious organizations receiving big budgets from the government include the headquarters for prayers, which coordinates what prayer Imams should say every week to promote the "values" advocated by Khamenei. The Islamic Propagation organization, which promotes the party line using the medium of art, and the high council of seminaries are other beneficiaries. Increasing these organizations' budget led to protests on social media.

According to an Iran International TV report, funds allocated to some of these organizations have had a growth over 126% in the next year's budget. This includes over two trillion rials allocated to the Islamic Propagation office in Qom which mainly publishes anti-US posters and pamphlets to promote the slogans of the Supreme Leader and other clerics in the system.

On the other hand, the IRIB is so unpopular among viewers that when the state TV was hacked twice during the past week, no one would have noticed it if the hackers did not talk to the media after the event, some Iranian social media users joked.

Next year, the IRIB will get over 25 trillion rials ($100 million) for creating animated cartoons such as those it produced to demonize the United States after IRGC Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in early 2020.

The Majles research center noted that the nature of IRIB’s advertising, which is mainly about food, causes dissent in the society when most viewers' purchasing power has sharply declined because of the current economic crisis and food price hikes topping 60 percent.

According to a report by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is the political wing of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the new naval militia is part of the Qods (Quds) force, which operates outside of Iran’s borders.

"The Qods Force has been recruiting mercenaries for newly created, armed and trained terrorist units to attack ships and maritime targets in the region," it said, alleging that the naval unit is recruiting people from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Africa.

The 55-page report says the IRGC is training the units in the Caspian Sea district of Zibakenar in the northern province of Gilan before deploying them to the Arabian Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.

The group said the mission of the new unit is to "disrupt maritime navigation of commercial ships, to attack ports, conduct ship hijackings and plant mines", and provided examples of such operations using small boats off Yemen's Red Sea port of Hudaydah.

It is not immediately possible to verify the claim, but the IRGC has an active military academy in the coastal county of Zibakenar since 2015.

Earlier last month, the US seized thousands of weapons destined for the Houthi rebels in Yemen from the Iranian port of Jask.