Iranians Greet New Century As Uncertainties, Hardships Remain

The Saudi-led coalition on Sunday said the attacks were aimed at a water desalination plant in Al-Shaqeeq, an Aramco distribution station in Jizan, a power station in Dhahran al Janub, a gas facility in Khamis Mushait and an Aramco liquefied natural gas plant in Yanbu.

"These hostile attacks and debris resulting from interceptions caused some material damage at the facilities and civilian cars and houses. There was no loss of life as of now," said the statement carried on state media.

The attack came amid talk that Washington is contemplating removing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from its ‘foreign terrorist designation’, FTO, designation to ink a nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Israel, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies in the Persian Gulf have serious misgivings about the Biden administration’s quest to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, JCPOA, by making such concessions to Iran.

The Houthis have received sophisticated weapons from IRGC, through its extraterritorial Qods Force. Houthi missiles and drones have Iranian origin, the United States and UN arms experts have maintained.

It is not clear specify which facilities incurred damages. Saudi State media posted images and videos of what appeared to be debris from the projectiles, damaged cars and structures and firefighters dousing flames.

Initial investigations showed the group fired Iranian-made cruise missiles at the desalination plant and state oil firm Aramco's Jizan distribution center, the coalition said.

It said Saudi air defenses intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile and nine drones.

The Houthi military spokesman said the group would within hours announce a wide military operation on Saudi Arabia.

Houthis also launched drone and missile attacks at the United Arab Emirates in January, in what was seen as an escalation.

Riyadh leads a coalition that has been battling the Houthis for seven years in a conflict widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

"These barbaric attacks are a dangerous escalation," coalition spokesman Brigadier General Turki al-Malki said, adding this constituted a Houthi rejection of planned Yemeni consultations in Riyadh later this month.

The Houthis have said they would only participate in discussions held in a neutral country and the priority should be lifting a coalition blockade on areas held by the group.

The movement ousted Yemen's Saudi-backed government from the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014, prompting the alliance to intervene months later. The Houthis say they are fighting a corrupt system and foreign aggression.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed millions to the verge of famine.

On Thursday, the city-state of Bremen closed the Al-Mustafa Community Center, while Police in Münster, in the North Rhine-Westphalia state, raided the Hezbollah-controlled Imam-Mahdi Mosque and its affiliated center.

Germany’s Federal Interior Ministry outlawed all Hezbollah activities in 2020.

Police spokesperson Antonia Linnenbrink said, “The aim of the mission is to convey the ban. The association’s assets are confiscated. We are also looking for evidence of unconstitutional activities.”

Bremen’s Interior Senator Ulrich Mäurer said that Al-Mustafa “actively propagates and promotes violence or comparably serious acts contrary to international law such as terrorism against the State of Israel. The ban of this association is therefore absolutely necessary.”

He added that “there were anti-Israel books and writings in the association's premises, including, for example, a flyer by the political and religious leader of Iran.”

“There is evidence that the Al-Mustafa Community tried to introduce children to its ideology and thus also to that of Hezbollah at an early age. The association's so-called scout group was also banned.”

Earlier in the year, an Islamic organization in Germany removed the Hamburg Islamic Center from its board of directors on allegations that the center is Iran’s “long terrorist arm” in Europe.

NourNews, which is affiliated with the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, said on Saturday that Iran’s Agriculture Minister Javad Sadatinejad signed the agreement during a visit to Russia last week.

NourNews did not report the monetary value of the deal.

The report said the deal is to address concerns about shortages of basic goods and livestock feed in the next Iranian year, starting on March 21.

Iran eliminated a major subsidy for importing food and animal feed recently, raising fears of rising prices in the new year. According to a report by ISNA on Saturday, out of about $19 billion worth of basic goods imported in the past 12 months nearly $15 billion was subsidized with cheap dollars provided to importers.

Earlier in March, the parliament decided to scrap the multi-billion-dollar subsidy for essential food and medicines, despite warnings of more inflation and hardship.

The idea to eliminate the subsidy emerged after hardliner president Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) assumed office in August and could count on backing from conservatives and ultra-conservatives in control of Iran’s parliament.

The deputy head of Iran’s Customs Administration, Foroud Asgari, said about 30 million tons of basic goods have been cleared through customs and entered the country.

The spokesman for the association of mobile phone importers, Mohammadreza Aalian, told IRNA that Samsung had a 48-percent market share with 8,710,000 phones of different models worth nearly $1.88 billion.

Chinese brand Xiaomi had 28 percent of the market with 5,210,000 million cellphones, which totaled about $1.1 billion.

The third brand was Nokia with 12 percent or 2,250,000 that was worth only $54 million because most were simple devices, not smartphones.

Apple had a 6-percent share with 1,030,000 phones worth $1.35 billion, making it the runner-up in terms of the total value.

According to an earlier report by Tasnim news agency, Iran spent $9 billion in foreign currency to import 45 million cellphones in 33 months, until the end of 2021, with a large portion going for “luxury” devices with a price tag of over $600.

According to Tasnim’s data, around one quarter of the money, or about $2.3 billion was spent on importing just two million luxury phones – mainly from the American brand Apple. This is less than five percent of the total number of phones bought by the people. Buying such cellphones is too extravagant for most Iranians with ordinary nine-to-five jobs who are paid about $100 to $200 per month.

Nasrallah made the remarks on Friday after General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine released a statement saying that around 1,000 fighters from the Iran-backed group and Syria were recruited to fight in Ukraine.

“I categorically deny anything of these claims. These claims are lies that are devoid of truth. No one from Hezbollah, no fighter or military expert, went to this arena or any of the arenas of these war,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Al Mayadeen TV.

Hezbollah is believed to have experts and advisors helping Iranian proxies and militias in Iraq and Houthis in Yemen. The Shiite group has also fought in the Syrian civil war for a decade alongside Bashar al Assad's forces.

On March 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved deploying up to 16,000 “volunteers” from the Middle East to fight alongside Russian forces.

"If you see that there are these people who want of their own accord, not for money, to come to help the people living in Donbass, then we need to give them what they want and help them get to the conflict zone," Putin said at a televised security council meeting from the Kremlin.