Source Of Explosions, Gun Fire Heard In Western Iran Unclear

"The number of patients with Omicron in the country has reached 1,162 and ... one death has been reported due to Omicron in each of the cities of Tabriz, Yazd and Shahrekord, and one critically ill patient is hospitalized in Ahvaz," ministry spokesman Mohammad Hashemi told state broadcaster IRIB.

Iran this week lifted restrictions on land travel to and from neighboring countries and some European states while the impact of the new variant remained unclear. Tehran maintained a ban on arrivals from Britain, France and eight countries in Southern Africa over Omicron fears, local media reported.

Iran, the second country in the world after China that experienced the pandemic and its epicenter in the Middle East, has suffered 132,044 deaths in five waves of COVID-19 infections since February 2020. Health experts and some politicians believe that the official numbers are too low and some allege a cover-up.

Deaths have fallen in recent months and stood at 18 on Saturday, a 22-month low, after Iran expanded vaccination in August following a slow start.

More than 53 million of Iran's population of about 85 million have received two doses of coronavirus vaccine, and 12.2 million have received three doses.

KhameneiSite, which was suspended is just one of the accounts controlled by Khamenei’s office. Iranian Twitter users have been urging the social media giant to suspend all his accounts for its violent and vitriolic content. Many say that if Donald Trump’s account can be suspended, Khamenei’s accounts should also be closed.

On January 13, Khamenei’s official website posted an animation video showing an all-terrain vehicle with an operator on board driving through a golf course and approaching a point from where its camera shows a man who looks like Trump playing golf. The operator targets the figure and a large gun on top of the vehicle aims at the target and the video ends.

The same video was reportedly shared on Twitter, with threats to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani, and then deleted, which could be the reason why @KhameneiSite was suspended.

Khamenei and other top Iranian officials have been threatening revenge against former US officials whom they blame for killing its chief military and intelligence operator in the Middle East in January 2020.

Last January, Twitter suspended another one of Khamenei’s accounts after it also published a threat against Trump.

Sharq daily said that Riaisi invited a meeting of former foreign ministers and top officials this week to discuss his upcoming trip to Moscow, but Zarif was not invited. The newspaper added that not inviting him could be related to his criticism of Russia in an audio file released by Iran International last April.

In the confidential recording, Zarif had criticized both former Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Russia for harming the prospects of JCPOA, Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers. Zarif argued that Russia tried to harm the JCPOA, and at one point he to use “rude and non-diplomatic language” with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Iran’s hardliners always attacked Zarif accusing him of being more concerned with having good relations with the West and engineering the nuclear agreement, which former US president Donald Trump abandoned in 2018.

Raisi is scheduled to visit Moscow on January 19 and reports speak of his plans to purchase Russian arms and sign a 20-year cooperation agreement.

Pundits and citizens in Iran have been increasingly criticizing Russia recently, accusing it of trying to use Iran and its nuclear dispute for its own interests.

Jalil Rahimi Jahanabadi, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy committee of the parliament, said in a tweet on Saturdaythat Iran and Saudi Arabia are preparing to restore diplomatic relations, which were cut following the incident.

Mobs led by hardliners attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehranand its consulate in Mashhad, invading the missions, vandalizing, and burning the properties, on January 2, 2016.

Jahanabadi said relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia will have an important impact on easing regional tensions and boosting the unity of the Islamic world.

He called on Iran’s security and media institutions to be careful about activities by the “vicious Israelis and stupid radicals” that may try to disrupt ties between Tehran and Riyadh.

Recently, Iranian officials have been insisting that a new round of Iran-Saudi negotiations will take place, but Riyadh has so far been silent.

One of the most contentious issues between Iran and Saudi Arabia is Tehran’s support for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Riyadh and Tehran held talks last year to reduce tensions with the aim of restoring diplomatic ties but Saudis have said the talks were exploratory with no tangible results.

The eastern district of New York said in a statement on Friday that a criminal complaint has been unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn charging Kambiz Attar Kashani with conspiring to provide products such as subscriptions to proprietary software, fixed attenuators, power supplies and storage systems to the government of Iran.

Kashani was arrested on Thursday in Chicago, Illinois, and will remain in custody pending a detention hearing.

From around February 2019 through June 2021, Kashani orchestrated an elaborate scheme to evade US export laws to send US tech to “the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which has been designated by the United States government as acting for or on behalf of terrorist organizations”, said Breon Peace, the attorney for the eastern district of NY.

The statement noted that “the CBI has materially assisted, sponsored and provided financial, material or technological support, goods or services to Lebanese Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, and to the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)”.

To procure the items, he allegedly used two United Arab Emirates companies as fronts to deceive multiple US technology companies, Peace added.

FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Joseph R. Bonavolanta said that “Kashani profited financially by strengthening the economy of one of the world’s most infamous state sponsors of terrorism, while circumventing critical US laws”.