Iran, Turkey Leaders Resolve To Negotiate Differences Over Syria

The intelligence organization of the IRGC made the accusation in a statement on Monday about Zahra Mansouri Hamdani, also known as Sareh, who was previously arrested on charges linked to an appearance in a BBC documentary on gay rights in Iraqi Kurdistan. 

The statement described her "the leader of the biggest gang of Iranian girls trafficking to Erbil,” saying that following months of surveillance, the IRGC intelligence tracked her to the trafficking gangs that had “sold hundreds of Iranian women and girls” to customers in Erbil. 

The IRGC also accuses her of promoting homosexuality, gambling and fraud as well as de-stigmatization of illicit sexual relations in cyberspace. 

The organization added that her gang was run in collaboration with a man identified as "Alireza Farjadi-Kia" and another woman that goes only by the name "Kati".

She was arrested while trying to cross the border and seek asylum in Turkey on October 27, 2021. She was held in solitary confinement for 53 days, during which, the Revolutionary Guard subjected her to intense interrogations, insulted her identity and appearance, threatened to execute her and to take away custody of her children. On January 16, Sareh was accused of “spreading corruption on earth,” including through "promoting homosexuality”, “communication with anti-Islamic Republic media channels” and “promoting Christianity.”

Rights group Amnesty International appealed to Iran’s Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei on January 25, calling for release. 

The current worth of Russia’s contracts in Iran's oil and gas fields is $4 billion, but Iran’s state news agency IRNA says if the new MoU leads to any contracts, Moscow’s total investment will increase 10-fold to $40 billion.

The agreement, as announced by the oil ministry’s Shana news agency, covers development of the Kish and North Pars gas-fields, as well as six oil fields.

It was penned during an online ceremony by the companies’ chief executives on the day Vladimir Putin arrives for a three-way summit with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The most significant aspect of the Gazprom-NIOC memorandum for Iran may be access to technology for LNG (liquid natural gas), which Tehran once hoped to access through agreements with western majors, especially Total, that withdrew in the face of United States ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions after 2018.

North Pars has around 33,000 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas, and Kish gas-field 8,300 bcf. Both are currently at the feasibility stage.

While Iran has the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia, it has been slow to develop its fields and boost exports in the face of sanctions.

Putin’s visit is being watched close with the expectation of closer links between Moscow and Tehran, boosting trade from just $4 billion in 2021, with both subject to international sanctions and as the Ukraine crisis pushes up global oil and food prices.

The formal reason for Putin’s visit is a tripartite summit with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts to discusses Syria, where Tehran and Moscow back Bashar al Assad and Turkey backs the residual rebel forces in the north of the country.

Turkey's President Rcep Tayyip Erdogan also arrive in Tehran and received by President Ebrahim Raisi.

However, Iranian government-owned media has been portraying the visit as a major event to counter the West. Fars news website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard on Tuesday splashed a headline decaling, “The end of Western monetary and financial hegemony”.

Presumably, Iran and Russia are setting up a mechanism to interchange currencies, but the outline is so vague it is impossible to clearly describe it.

Last week, the US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan twice warned that Iran might provide military drones to Russia to be used in the Ukraine war. Iran’s foreign ministry tried to deny it, saying Tehran is neutral in the war and will not aid any side.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Monday [July 18] reiterated that Washington is monitoring the situation. “Well, we’ve spoken about our concerns regarding a potential Iranian provision of UAV technology to Russia. We will continue to watch very closely. All of our sanctions remain in force,” he said, adding that such a transaction might violate of host of American and other sanctions on the two countries.

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Despite their political alliance, which since the invasion of Ukraine has increasingly taken an anti-Western tone, economic transactions between Iran and Russia remain small.

Bilateral trade rose to $4 billion in 2021, but this is far less than, for example, Russia’s trade with Turkey at $33 billion, while Moscow’s exports to Iran are mainly foodstuffs, which are less vulnerable to US third-party sanctions than other sectors.

Before its costly adventure in Ukraine, Russia was mindful of US third-party sanctions on Iran and there were no major cases of, for example, banking violations.

The specter of an emerging US-backed Arab-Israeli bloc that could tilt the Middle East balance of power further away from Iran has accelerated its clerical rulers' efforts to strengthen strategic ties with the Kremlin.

"Considering the evolving geopolitical ties after the Ukraine war, the establishment tries to secure Moscow's support in Tehran's confrontation with Washington and its regional allies," Reuters quoted an unnamed senior Iranian official as saying.

Sending a clear message to the West that Russia will seek to boost ties with anti-West Iran, Putin will meet the Islamic Republic's most powerful authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, just a few days after US President Joe Biden visited Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Emboldened by high oil prices after the Ukraine war, Tehran is betting that with Russia's support it could pressure Washington to offer concessions for revival of a 2015 nuclear deal.

Almost a year of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington in Vienna stalled in March, with Iran questioning the US resolve and Washington calling on Tehran to drop extra demands.

But Moscow and Tehran, both subject to US sanctions, have overlapped interests. Iran, whose oil industry has struggled for years under US sanctions, has long relied on exports to China to keep the economy afloat. Since the start of Ukraine war, Moscow has taken away a big chunk of Iran's oil market in Asia.

In May, several reports said that Iran's crude exports to China have fallen sharply as Beijing favoured heavily discounted Russian barrels, leaving almost 40 million barrels of Iranian oil stored on tankers at sea in Asia and seeking buyers.

The representative of Tehran at the parliament, who was once a culture minister and a presidential candidate as well as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's chief of staff when he was president, made the remarks in an interview with Tasnim news, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard. 

He said his son was arrested in July 2019 and was sentenced to five years in prison in February 2020 on charges of acting against national security through cooperation with the MEK. He was jailed in Evin Prison in February 2021. 

The MP added that the MEK had tried to use his son’s "weak point" to get classified information but his son did not have any. 

He gave vague explanations about his son's "weakness" and only said, "His weakness is both physical and mental" and has made him unable to provide for his livelihood. “My son is very emotional, naive and weak-willed," and the MEK found ways to trap him and exploit his weakness, he said. 

According to reports, Mehdi Mir-Salim had not gone back to prison for more than 200 days following a furlough but security forces did not arrest him. He was also granted amnesty for half of his prison term. 

On July 16, Iran's Foreign Ministry sanctioned a dozens of US officials and lawmakers over their alleged support for the MEK.

The premier of the so-called Yemen’s National Salvation Government, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtour, said in capital Sana'a on Monday that Yemen has the final say in the Bab al-Mandab strait and will “preserve the Arab identity of the Red Sea in the face of the US conspiracy to turn it into a Zionist lake."

"Bab al-Mandab is an international waterway, but it is part of Yemeni territory," he emphasized. 

The Bab-el-Mandeb strait – located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa -- connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and acts as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Echoing Iran’s position regarding US President Joe Biden’s tour of the Middle East and the summit of regional Arab countries in Jeddah, he said that during the visit Washington and Riyadh tried to cover up the reality of the Saudi-led “brutal aggression, the massacres, crimes and violations” they committed against Yemen, by portraying the crisis as just an internal conflict. 

The Houthis receives military and political support from Iran in their conflict with other Yemenis backed who are backed by a Saudi-led coalition since 2014. Iran has been sharing its missile and drone technology with Yemen’s Houthis and has also supplied other proxy forces, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias.