Iran Smuggles Weapons From Iraq For Russia's War In Ukraine

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh called on Taliban officials to ensure the security of Iran’s embassy in Kabul and its missions across Afghanistan. He warned of efforts on social media to whip up anti-Iranian sentiment over alleged mistreatment of Afghan immigrants in Iran.

Sectarian tensions have risen since last week’s killing of two Shia clerics in Imam Reza shrine, Mashhad, attributed to Sunni extremists. Many Afghans are in Iran unofficially, with numbers increasing since the Taliban took Kabul last year as the United States ended its 20-year military presence.

A conservative newspaper in Tehran claimed Thursday that 8 million Afghans were in Iran, and that the Mashhad knife attack reflected Iranian authorities’ lax approach in allowing violent extremists amid refugees. Jomhuri Eslami reminded readers of the Taliban’s past anti-Shia animosity and said there was no difference between the group and Isis-Daesh, the Islamic State group.

Earlier on Monday, demonstrators outside Iran’s embassy in Kabul held banners with pictures of refugees and the words "Isn't Afghan a human being?"

Ambassador Bahador Aminian met in recent days with Afghan acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and former president Hamid Karzai, presumably to further Iran’s hopes of a broad-based government.

The border crossing is north of Iran’s oil center Abadan and close to Iraq’s Basra province.

The move came after Iraqis stormed the crossing and removed barriers. With around a quarter of Iraq’s population below the poverty line − around double that in Basra province − and the Iranian rial relatively low, hundreds had gathered on the Iraqi side to protest against the authorities barring the import of competitively priced items including potatoes, tomato, eggplants and carrots.

Following the protests, an official in Iraq’s customs administration ordered staff to expedite procedures at the crossing for the entry of agricultural and food products.

Iran’s policy of subsidizing food products and gasoline has long encouraged their export to neighboring countries with higher prices, whether through ‘legitimate’ channels or smuggling. Iraq has just announced a new electronic system aimed at monitoring border trade, including at the five official crossings along its 1,600km frontier with Iran.

During a ceremony on Iran’s southern island of Kish Monday, Iranian road minister Rostam Ghasemi and Qatari transport minister Jassim bin Saif Al-Sulaiti inked documents over accommodation, and air and maritime transport for those attending the soccer tournament.

Qatar is expecting 1 million visitors. Iran and Qatar plan 400 direct flights between Kish and Doha, as well as four cruise liners linking Iranian and Qatari ports, during the event. Kish island, off the southern coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf, is 270km from Doha, only 40 minutes by plane and five or six hours by sea. It expects to host nearly 100,000 soccer fans.

Last week President Ebrahim Raisi spoke by telephone with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to discuss Iran’s role in the World Cup through Kish and other islands nearby.

Iran’s team has been drawn in Group B of the competition along with England, the United States, and the winner of European playoffs between Ukraine, Scotland, and Wales. Iran beat the US 2-1 in the 1998 World Cup in France, its first ever victory in the competition.

Foreign Ministry spokesman announced the appointment of Mohammad Kazem (Hossein) Al-e Sadeq during his weekly press conference on Monday.

The spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said the ambassador-designate would be inaugurated soon. He did not provide further details.

Little is known about Al-e Sadeq, who has served as a deputy to the incumbent ambassador to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, a former senior IRGC commander who assumed office in 2017.

Al-e Sadeq speaks Arabic and is the younger brother of renowned Iraqi-Iranian poet and writer Mohammed Reza Al-e Sadeq -- also known as Mohammed Reza bin Muhammad bin Sadeq al-Najafi. The family seems to have dual Iraq-Iranian roots, which is not uncommon among Shiites. Many Iranians settled in Iraq decades ago, either as clerics or traders.

He is reportedly a former member of the board of director of the Sepas Veterans Association, which is apparently a nongovernmental organization that commemorates IRGC martyrs, particularly those who held positions in the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence organization.

The moto of the organisation’s Instagram page is “defending Islam does not end with defending the homeland”, suggesting that its members are supporters of IRGC overseas operations.

Masjedi, the outgoing ambassador to Baghdad, has served as a senior member of the IRGC’s extraterritorial Quds Force and as an advisor to Qasem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander who was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday that the Obama administration was engaged in a covert attempt to mediate between Israel and Syria, a move that was cut short due to the war in Syria.

In a book published earlier in April, former US special envoy to Syria Frederic C. Hof said that the initiative had a promising track, with Syrian President Bashar Assad and then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showing willingness to reach a peace agreement during their meetings.

Hof, who worked on Syria-related matters in the US Department of State from 2009 until 2011, said such an accord would have seen Israel leaving the Golan Heights in return for Syria severing ties with Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The two neighbors have been locked in a war since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and effectively annexed the territory in 1981 in a move not recognized by most of the international community.

Attempts to achieve peace between Israel and Syria have failed mainly due to Damascus’s support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.