Secret Talks In Oman Suggest US Is Preparing Deals With Iran

According to the report released on Tuesday, in 2021, the population below the absolute poverty line in the country increased to 30.4%.

Based on the report, unemployment, lack of a higher education degree, having children and being a tenant are among the factors that increase poverty in the country.

The report shows that Iran's economic situation has been deteriorating long before the global sanctions hit the country's economy.

According to a report published by ILNA in January, one-third of the country’s population is now living in extreme poverty, after the number almost doubled in one year from 2020 to 2021. However, it is believed that the number could in reality be far higher. 

According to official figures released by the interior ministry, around 60 percent of the 84 million Iranians live under the relative poverty line of whom between 20 to 30 million live in "absolute poverty".

Economic failures of the regime are becoming more and more difficult to justify, even given US sanctions. "The main reason for the [economic] problems [in the past ten years] is not just the sanctions. A major part of these were caused by wrong decisions and inefficiency," Supreme leader Ali Khamenei admitted in a speech last year.

“We look at the regional security structure that is threatened by Iran - a topic that we discussed in depth,” Herzog said following his meeting with Aliyev, “and we expect to develop cooperation between us in many fields.”

Azerbaijan and Israel have been expanding bilateral relations for many years, with Herzog's visit being the latest step. Israel has had an embassy in Baku since 1992 and in March, Azerbaijan opened its own in Tel Aviv.

“Iran is a destabilizing influence in the region that is working continuously to act against Israel and against the alliance of peace and security that is developing in the region, and I will certainly discuss this,” said the Israeli president.

Herzog will participate in a ceremony celebrating Israel's 75th birthday along with the local Jewish community on Wednesday.

Oil and gas rich Azerbaijan gets 69% of its military weapons from Israel, and Israel imports 40% of its oil from the Caucasian state which shares a border with Iran.

It has been a tense few months between Tehran and Baku. Iran angrily reacted to Azerbaijan’s opening an embassy in Tel Aviv in March, accusing it of aiding Israel in its operations against the regime, in addition to relations souring following an armed attack on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran in January. Iran has also carried out military drills over the border in a bid to intimidate its neighbor. 

The UAE move roughly corresponds with Saudi Arabia’s decision in early March to restore diplomatic relations with Iran, which has been much discussed as a shift in Riyadh’s regional policies. The deal was brokered by China which further highlighted a weakening of the decades-long reliance on the United States by Persian Gulf Arab oil producers.

"As a result of our ongoing evaluation of effective security cooperation with all partners, two months ago, the UAE withdrew its participation in the Combined Maritime Forces," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM.

The Combined Maritime Forces is a 34-nation task force, headquartered at the US naval base in Bahrain, working on security, counterterrorism and counter-piracy in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf areas. But in fact, the US and Israel were trying to forge a regional coalition to contain Iran, including an air defense network.

The region contains some of the world's most important shipping routes where, since 2019, suspected Iranian attacks began against oil tankers amid tensions with the United States. The Obama, Trump and Biden administrations chose not to retaliate against Iranian naval provocations over the years or show a convincing military deterrent response.

Former President Donald Trump was said to have blinked when suspected Iranian drones and missiles hit Saudi oil facilities in September 2019, inflicting heavy damage. Reports at the time said that Trump changed his mind about a military response at the last minute.

The statement said the UAE was committed to dialogue and diplomatic engagement to advance regional security and stability, and that it was committed to ensuring navigation safety in its seas in accordance with international law.

However, five weeks ago, Iran seized two tankers within a week in Gulf waters near the Strait of Hormuz. The second tanker, the Niovi, had been travelling from Dubai toward the UAE's Fujairah port.

The UAE also said that a report by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday which, citing US and Gulf sources, said the UAE was frustrated by the lack of US response to the recent tanker seizures, was a "mischaracterization" of conversations between the two countries.

However, the UAE decision to leave the maritime coalition and speak about “diplomatic engagement” - possibly referring to Iran - to enhance its security, shows that the WSJ report was not off the mark.

The UAE announcement will be seen in Tehran as a triumph, since the Iranian regime has proclaimed the goal of expelling the United States from the region to be at the top of its agenda.

The White House will face more domestic criticism by Republicans, who have already charged that the administration's flirtations with Iran to revive the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, has driven the Saudis to seek alternative security arrangements.

Iran, however, might press its luck too hard. If Tehran was aware of the UAE decision, its new seizure of vessels in the Persian Gulf might demonstrate to the Emiratis that Tehran will not be satisfied with a more neutral UAE position and will use military force to further intimidate regional countries.

With reporting by Reuters

Anti-compulsory hijab activist, Mozhgan Keshavarz, who was the first to raise the humiliating stirp search of female detainees, told Iran International Monday via video conference that she was first strip-searched after her arrest in April 2019 and detention at Vozara Detention Center in Tehran where the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody on September 16 last year.

Keshavarz said the search took place in front of a camera and was repeated when she was taken to Qarchak Prison for women, and then at a Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) detention center where she was photographed completely naked and was told the photos were taken to add to her case file to make sure she would not later claim she was tortured during her detention.

At the IRGC detention center she was held in a solitary cell where she had to sleep on the carpet-covered ground and to shower and use the toilet in front of the camera in the cell.

“I had to wash my body with my clothes on,” she said, adding that she does not think the feelings of humiliation and shame she felt would ever go way. “I’m not the same Mozhgan that I was who always laughed.”

Keshavarz was assaulted by one of her interrogators there and her neck tendon was broken which required surgery. She was finally allowed to go on medical furlough in 2021 and was conditionally freed later. She is currently living in hiding as the IRGC has issued another arrest warrant for her.

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Keshavarz was arrested with two other activists for offering white roses to women on a Tehran metro train, the International Women’s Day, and asking them to support anti-compulsory hijab activists.

She was later sentenced by a revolutionary court to a total of twenty-three years and six months -- five years for “assembly and collusion for acting against national security”, one year for “propaganda against the regime”, ten-years for “encouraging moral corruption” and seven years and six months for “insulting sanctities”—but the sentence was later reduced to twelve years and seven months after appeal.

Keshavarz’s story was first shared with the public through the Twitter account of the Me-too-Movement-Iran on Saturday. She told Iran International that she only wanted to share her feelings with others but soon found out that what happened to her is a routine practice in prisons and many other activists have had the same experience.

Since her revelations, other female activists including Zeynab Zaman, Shaparak Shajarizadeh and actress Mahnaz Afshar who were subjected to same humiliation have also come forward with their stories.

In a series of tweets Sunday, former political prisoner Nasibeh Shamsaei said she was forced to fully strip in front of prison cameras at a ward run by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) at Evin Prison of Tehran and again at Qarchak Prison for women.

“I was forced to do this three times. I was told to strip in a cell measuring two by one and a half meters at A2 Ward of the IRGC at Evin Prison with a camera above my head and I didn’t know who was watching… She made me squat and get up twice under the pretext that she wanted to make sure I hadn’t hidden anything in my vagina. The same thing happened when I arrived at Qarchak and once again after an in-person visit,” she wrote.

According to Shamsaei women were forced into such humiliating search even if they were having their periods. “After the in-person visit she forced me into it when I was having my period.”

In an article on Tuesday, the Korea Economic Daily said the move will help Seoul resume its business ties with Tehran as well as President Joe Biden in the 2024 US presidential election.

Citing diplomatic and government sources in Seoul, the conservative business daily said Korean and US government officials are involved in working-level discussions under Washington’s leadership to unfreeze the Iranian funds.

South Korea has blocked $7 billion which it owes for importing Iranian oil prior to full imposition of US sanctions in May 2019. Bilateral ties between Iran and South Korea are frayed because of Seoul's refusal to release the Iranian money held at two commercial banks – Woori Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea.

South Korea was previously one of Iran's biggest crude oil buyers in Asia. Before the reimposition of US sanctions, South Korean oil companies paid for their oil imports in their own national currency the won through the Iranian central bank account in Seoul and paid government companies involved in selling the oil in rials.

The report quoted unnamed sources familiar with the matter as saying that the release, if implemented, will come “under stringent conditions that Iran use the funds only for public purposes such as UN dues and purchasing COVID-19 vaccines.”

Previously, there have been reports that the US would agree to the release of the funds solely for humanitarian needs, but Washington has never confirmed the existence of such a plan.

“If all goes to plan, we expect our strained relationship with Iran to improve significantly,” a Seoul government official told the newspaper.

According to the source, if talks turn out to be successful, the frozen money will be allowed to be transferred to Iranian bank branches in neighboring Middle Eastern countries, not directly to Iran, to monitor the flow and use of the funds.

The report came three days after Iran International reported that “the Islamic Republic is expected to free hostages with dual nationality in exchange for its assets in South Korea and show more flexibility on issues related to its nuclear program in exchange for the release of its funds in Iraq.”

Currently there are three dual nationals with American citizenship and two individuals with US permanent residency held by Iran on trumped-up charges of espionage. The three citizens are Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz, while Jamshid Sharmahd and Shahab Dalili are US permanent residents.

Confirming the report by Iran International and those of “some local media in the Middle East,” the South Korean outlet also said a transfer of Iranian funds in Seoul would come with conditions that Tehran release “a US hostage held in Iran on spying charges” and limit uranium enrichment levels during nuclear development at 60%.

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As South Korea-Iran relations turned sour, Tehran once incited a boycott of Korean products in Iran, targeting Samsung Electronics Co. and Revolutionary Guards briefly seized a Korean oil tanker in 2021.In 2022, a newspaper funded by Supreme Leader said Iran must close the Strait of Hormuz to South Korean vessels until Seoul releases $7 billion frozen funds.

Seoul’s relations with Tehran apparently worsened earlier this year when President Yoon Suk Yeol described the Islamic Republic as the “enemy” of the United Arab Emirates during his trip to the UAE, comparing the threat the UAE faces from Iran to the threat South Korea faces from North Korea. Yoon said, “The enemy of the UAE, its most-threatening nation, is Iran.”

The report quoted Sung Il-kwang, a Korea University professor, as saying that “There is nothing South Korea can gain from becoming an enemy of Iran... Korea will benefit from gaining access to Iran’s huge market.”