US President Donald Trump is set to list Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), Al-Arabiya English reported citing officials familiar with the matter.
The Biden administration had earlier revoked the Houthis' designation.
The report came hours after the Houthis released the crew of the Galaxy Leader more than a year after they seized the Bahamas-flagged vessel off the Yemeni Red Sea coast, a video released by the Houthis Al-Masirah TV showed.
The crew were handed to Oman "in coordination" with the three-day-old ceasefire in Gaza's war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, the video showed.
Ten Baha'i women were arrested on Wednesday to serve the jail terms they had been handed over in October, the Hengaw human rights organization reported, as the crackdown on the Baha’i minority continues.
The women were arrested and transferred to prison on the morning of Wednesday, January 22, when security forces raided their homes in Isfahan, the Hengaw report said.
Charged in the Isfahan Revolutionary Court with "educational and propaganda activities against the sacred Islamic law”, a source familiar with the case told Iran International that the court classified the verdict as "confidential and security-related”.
According to information obtained by Iran International, the court cited activities such as organizing educational classes on music, yoga, painting, English language, and nature tours for Iranian and Afghan children and teenagers as evidence of the charges.
The women have had all phones, laptops, digital devices, gold items, necklaces, rings, and US and Australian dollars confiscated from their homes as a "supplementary punishment" for the benefit of the "Muslims' Fund (the state).”
Roya Azadkhosh, Nasrin Khadami, Mojgan Pourshafi, Azita Rezvanikhah, Boshra Motahar, Sara Shakib, Shoorangiz Behamin, Sanaz Rasteh, Maryam Khorsandi, and Firouzeh Rastinejad had previously been sentenced by Branch 37 of the Isfahan Provincial Court of Appeals to five years of imprisonment each.
Additionally, each of these individuals was sentenced to a fine of 50 million tomans, five years of deprivation from social services, and a two-year travel ban.
The Baha’i citizens were initially arrested on Sunday, April 25, 2022, in Baharestan, Isfahan, and were temporarily released on bail in May of the same year, pending the completion of judicial proceedings.
Unofficial sources estimate that over 300,000 Baha'is live in Iran. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic officially recognizes only Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism.
Since the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom uprising which has seen woman in Iran under even greater threat of arrest than ever before, the risks for Baha'i women have soared, with dozens summoned to court facing vague criminal charges.
Iran is taking advantage of the ruling Palestinian Authority's lack of political legitimacy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to arm militants, the director of a leading research center in Ramallah told Iran International.
“Iran exploits this vacuum left by the lack of legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and unpopularity of President Mahmoud Abbas to maintain and sustain this situation," said Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
Adding that Tehran's interference is not welcome by most of the Palestinian pubic, the veteran pollster said around 90 percent of Palestinians want the resignation of the 89-year-old president who is 20 years into his four-year term.
“Palestinians don’t like Iran because they see it interfering in domestic Palestinian politics," he said.
"But since October 7 this has started to change, but we don’t see a majority of the Palestinian public favoring Iran. They just don’t see how they can achieve their goals other than those advocated by Hezbollah and Iran which is violence," he added.
Suspicion with Iran's Shi'ite theocracy runs deep among Sunni Palestinians too.
"Palestinians see Iran as a Shia state that seeks to take advantage of the situation to advance Shi’ism in the region, exporting their ideologies as they’ve done in other countries such as Yemen and Iraq - which is unacceptable," he explained.
It comes as Israel launched an operation it dubbed Iron Wall in Jenin on Tuesday, a haven for Palestinian militants for decades where gunmen from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade have eluded Israeli and PA forces.
The operation has already seen multiple deaths and injuries as Israel cracks down on the armed groups, according to WAFA, the PA's official news agency.
“Iran has an interest in supporting armed groups like those in Jenin or anywhere else where Hamas and such groups are interested in fighting occupation," Shikaki added. "Given the fertile ground that’s there to recruit new foot soldiers and join armed groups, Iran will continue to provide assistance.”
On Wednesday, as the violence in Jenin mounted, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the raids were aimed at curbing the influence of Tehran.
“We will not allow the arms of the Iranian octopus and radical Sunni Islam to endanger the lives of the settlers and establish an eastern terrorist front against the State of Israel. Strongly cripple the octopus's arms until they break,” he said.
Shikaki said that Iran will continue to have an avenue to interfere in Palestinian affairs as long as the occupation continues and there is a failure to come to a peaceful, diplomatic solution.
“Around 80-90% of Palestinians don’t see a peaceful solution because Isreal doesn’t want peace so that gives Iran the opportunity to exploit that.”
Earlier this month, Katz said that in the wake of the weakening of Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza and Iran’s largest military ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon, a new focus had been placed on military allies in the West Bank, compounded by the fall of Tehran’s ally, President Bashar Al Assad, in Syria.
"We are seeing increasing efforts to promote Palestinian terrorism in Israel through the smuggling of advanced weapons, funding and guidance both on the part of the Iranian axis and on the part of the radical Sunni Islamic axis that is strengthening its grip on the region after the events in Syria,” he said.
Iran has not been weakened by over a year of Mideast combat with Israel, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in some of his first remarks after Donald Trump returned to the White House, daring so-called enemies to test Tehran's mettle.
"That delusional fantasist claimed that Iran has been weakened," Khamenei told a group of his supporters in Tehran, without elaborating. "The future will reveal who has truly been weakened."
In the last week, US President Donald Trump, his predecessor Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have all described Iran as weakened.
They cited Tehran's reduced influence in the region following the fall of its ally Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, Israeli attacks on its air defense capabilities and the killing of leaders of its armed Palestinian and Lebanese allies.
Khamenei said former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein started the invasion of Iran in September 1980 and then-US president Ronald Reagan provided significant support to his regime, both "under the illusion that Iran was weak."
"They, along with dozens of other deluded individuals, ultimately met their demise, while the Islamic regime grew stronger day by day. I tell you, this experience will be repeated once again this time," he added.
His comments came two days after Trump's return to the White House and at a time when his administration is potentially weighing whether to support a possible Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Asked whether Trump would support such an attack, his national security advisor Mike Waltz said: "This is a moment to make those key decisions, and we'll be doing that over the next month."
Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, Waltz also said Iran's regional position is under strain with its air defenses destroyed and key allies diminished. He credited Israeli attacks for what he called a strategic shift in the Middle East.
Khamenei, however, referred to the recent ceasefire in Gaza as a victory for the Iran-led Resistance Front and "a clear sign of the realization of the prediction that resistance is alive and will endure."
He emphasized that without US support, Israel would have collapsed within the first weeks after October 7, 2023, when Tehran-backed Hamas militants attacked Israel and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
"Over the past year and a few months, the Zionist regime committed every atrocity it could, bombing homes, hospitals, mosques and churches in a small area like Gaza, Khamenei said.
"Yet in the end, it not only failed to achieve the goal set by its miserable and discredited leader—eliminating Hamas and governing Gaza without resistance—but was also forced to sit at the negotiation table with Hamas and accept its terms for a ceasefire."
Trump has signaled stepped-up support for Israel and a renewed hard line on Iran.
The hawkish new president is due to lift Biden's freeze on delivering 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in his first days in the White House, Israeli news outlet Walla News reported this week, citing Israel's ambassador to Washington.
"What is happening before the eyes of the world seems like a legend," Khamenei continued, "where a massive military apparatus like that of the United States, indifferent to human values, provides bunker-busting bombs to the oppressive and bloodthirsty Zionist regime."
After a cleric attributed the lack of rain to concerts, the Islamic Republic's local religious-ideological department canceled all music events in southwest Iran.
The Friday Prayer Imam of Abadan, a city known for housing the Middle East's oldest oil refinery, recently criticized the granting of concert permits, calling them sinful and claiming that music events anger God, leading to a lack of rain.
Following Abdolhossein Ghobishavi's statement, the provincial ideological department canceled several concert permits for February, according to local media reports.
This move contradicts an order from President Masoud Pezeshkian's administration, which has instructed all official bodies and ministries not to block music events.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, most forms of music have been banned from state television and radio.
Artists and performers face lengthy processes to obtain permits for releasing songs or holding concerts, and female singers are typically prohibited from performing.
Two Iranian cargo ships, the Golbon and the Jairan, have left China loaded with 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a crucial ingredient for making solid rocket propellant, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Citing unnamed security officials in two western countries, the FT said this shipment could be used to produce propellant for hundreds of Iranian mid-range missiles.
This amount of sodium perchlorate could produce 960 tons of ammonium perchlorate, which could produce 1,300 tons of propellant,enough to fuel 260 mid-range Iranian missiles such as the KheibarShekan or Haj Qassem, the officials said.
The chemicals are being shipped to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Bandar Abbas, a port in southern Iran, according to the officials.