Chinese Are No Longer Willing To Work On Iran Oil Projects

According to Ahvaz Human Rights Organization, the prisoners are identified as Ali Majdam, Moin Khanfari, Mohammad Reza Moghadam, Salem Mousavi, Adnan Mousavi and Habib Edris.

Six other Arab citizens have also been sentenced to long prison terms between 5 to 35 years, the report added.

The death sentences are issued while the Iranian authorities have released dozens of political prisoners and protesters in recent days, claiming an amnesty was issued for thousands of detainees.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic keeps putting pressure on activists and arrests continue. Hengaw Kurdish-Iranian human rights monitoring group reported that Arian Koukhaizadeh, an 18-year-old detained youth from the southwestern city of Ilam, went on a hunger strike by sewing his lips in protest at inattention to his case.

Narges Mansouri, one of the signatories of a letter calling for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's resignation, also announced in an audio file shared with Iran International that since January 29, in spite of acute illness, she began a hunger strike in protest to the inhumane behavior of the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, according to information received by Iran International, security agents are putting pressure on political activists, who signed a statement in support of Green Movement leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s call for a new constitution, to rescind their signatures.

CENTCOM announced on its official Twitter account Wednesday that the drone intended to carry out a reconnaissance mission over the Conoco base in northeastern Syria near the border with Iraq.

The targeted drone was identified and shot down on Tuesday afternoon local time.

CENTCOM did not mention in its tweet which force, or group controlled the drone, only emphasizing that it was "Iranian-manufactured".

Several hundred US soldiers are stationed in the north and east of Syria as part of the international coalition against the ISIS. The exact number of these soldiers is confidential.

In recent years, bases where coalition troops are stationed have been sporadically targeted by rockets or drones.

The Conoco base in the northeast of the Arab country is named after the American company that was responsible for the discovery and construction of a gas filed station in this region.

This comes as the use of Iranian drones in Russia's war on Ukraine is of particular concern to the US and its European allies and has had a negative impact on relations between the Islamic Republic and European powers.

In this regard, officials of the US Defense Intelligence Agency on Tuesday presented new evidence of the supply of Iranian drones to Russia and indirect involvement of the Islamic Republic in the war in Ukraine.

Farzaneh Sadegh Malvajerd, a Deputy at the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development announced Tuesday that about 1.4 million unstable units are built in urban parts of these areas.

Earlier, officials had estimated that the total area of worn-out and ineffective structures in Iran's metropolises is more than 166,000 hectares, with a total of 22,500,000 people living there.

Many of these areas are located on active earthquake faults.

In January, Mehdi Pirhadi, a member of Tehran Council also emphasized the need to renovate these buildings in Tehran to deal with earthquakes, warning that over 7 magnitude quakes could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Some experts had predicted that at least one and a half million people would die in case of an earthquake with a magnitude of 7 in Tehran.

However, it is not only the capital that is facing such a potential risk. There are active faults from Hamedan in west to Gilan in north that may cause a deadly earthquake at any moment.

Iran is crisscrossed by major geological fault lines and is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world because it is located where the Arabian, Indian, and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.

Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev (Mohammad-Hussein Dovtaev), 30, an Austrian national, was detained at Chiswick Business Park on Saturday by officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command. 

He appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty, speaking via a German-Austrian interpreter. The first session on Monday was adjourned without the suspect saying anything because only a Russian interpreter was available at the court. 

The suspect's name in Russian spelling signals that he is originally from one of the former Soviet republics, more likely from a Muslim-majority country. Dovtaev was bearded and wearing a grey sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms.

He has confessed that he had never traveled to Britain before and he is now in London thanks to help from a friend named "Othman" whose contact was stored in his mobile phone as "B”. He said he knew Othman from his time in Chechnya. He admitted that he took pictures of the Iran International building but deleted them before his arrest. According to the indictment documents, he called two phone numbers, one Russian and the other Turkish.

Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring remanded Dovtaev in custody, to next appear at the Old Bailey on March 3. Michael Haggar was the prosecutor of the case and Seemsa Dosas was the defense attorney.

According to reports Dovtaev had in his possession several records containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. These were seven videos depicting the outside of Building 11, Chiswick Business Park, as well as its security arrangements, contrary to section 58 (1) (b) of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Iran International was warned by authorities in November that its journalists were under threat from Iranian agents and the Metropolitan Police took measures to strengthen security around the network’s office in the area.

Amid repeated threats by the Islamic Republic against Iran International’s reporters, the UK government vowed in December to step up protection of London-based Iranian journalists.

British Foreign Minister James Cleverly said during a session at the parliament on December 13 that the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), in partnership with the Home Office, had ensured that the Iranian journalists were protected by the British police.

“The UK remains absolutely determined to ensure that Iran does not intimidate people within this country. We will always stand up to the aggression from foreign nations,” he noted, adding, “We will absolutely not tolerate threats, particularly towards journalists who are highlighting what is going on in Iran, or indeed any other individual living in the UK.”

One day later, Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib in a television interview repeated threats to “punish all those” who had a role in popular protests against the regime, wherever they might be.

Khatib on November 9 had said the Islamic Republic regards Iran International as “a terrorist organization,” adding that its staff and anyone affiliated with the channel will be pursued by the Ministry of Intelligence all over the globe.

In November, Volant Media, the parent company of Iran International, said that two of its journalists had been notified of direct threats. It said in a statement the Metropolitan Police had formally notified both journalists that these threats represent an imminent, credible and significant risk to their lives and those of their families. Ken McCallum — the head of MI5, the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency -- said on November 16 that UK authorities have discovered at least 10 “potential threats” since January 2022 to “kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime.”

Faced with nationwide antigovernment protests since mid-September, the Islamic Republic has blamed foreign-based Persian broadcasters such as BBC Persian and Iran International of “fomenting unrest”, while all media in the country are under tight government control and present protesters as “rioters” and “terrorists”.

US officials said they are looking at sending Ukraine more than 5,000 assault rifles, 1.6 million rounds of small arms ammunition, a small number of antitank missiles, and more than 7,000 proximity fuses seized in recent months off the Yemen coast from smugglers suspected of working for Iran, according to the report.

“The unusual move would open up a new supply of firepower America and its allies could tap into as they struggle to meet Ukraine’s need for military support as its war with Russia enters its second year,” the WSJ wrote.

“The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions and depleting allied stockpiles,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday, on the eve of an alliance meeting. “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under strain.”

The US had announced two arms seizures this year from vessels traveling in the Sea of Oman, on a route often used to carry arms from Iran to Yemen. There were also arms seizures last year. The two consignments captured this year yielded more than 5,000 AK-47 assault rifles.

Iran has been supplying kamikaze and possibly larger drones to Russia since mid- 2022 that have been used against infrastructure targets in Ukraine. The West has warned Iran to seize arms supplies to Russia, expressing serious concern.