Iran Once Again Bans Women From Entering A Football Stadium

The remark followed a Kuwait-Saudi announcement March 21 that they would develop the offshore gas and oil field without Tehran's participation.

The field, discovered in 1967 where maritime borders are unclear, has reserves of around 20 trillion cubic feet (ft3) of gas, enabling a potential daily output of 1 billion ft3 and 84,000 barrels of condensates.

Tehran called the move “illegal” Saturday. Oil Minister Javad Owji said Monday Tehran would soon begin drilling after having completed “comprehensive studies…by drilling exploration wells and conducting seismic surveys.”

“Even if the border is not demarcated, the field can be developed jointly using internationally tested models,” Iran’s deputy oil minister for international affairs, Ahmad Asadzadeh, said Sunday. Iran had delayed development pending a decision on maritime borders, he added.

Sabah spoke at a press conference with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who is on a regional tour to discuss diversifying Europe’s energy supplies away from Russia.

The Kuwaiti official news agency reported Sabah had told Le Drian that Arab concerns over the Iran nuclear file… “had been conveyed to our friends and allies, and we hope they will be taken into account.” France wants Kuwaiti engagement in Lebanon as Persian Gulf Arab countries prepare to restore diplomatic ties with Syria.

Human Rights Watch said on Monday that Iranian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release him and other environmentalists wrongfully imprisoned with him.

The tri-national, in detention since January 2018, was left behind when two other British hostages -- Nazanon Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashuri -- were released by the Islamic Republic in exchange for a 400-million-pound UK debt to Iran.

The British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claimed credit for negotiating a furlough for Tahbaz. Iranian authorities first released him on March 16 and allowed him to go to his family home in Tehran but detained him again two days later despite an apparent agreement between Iranian and British authorities to guarantee his leave, leading him to embark on a hunger strike.

Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, says, “It is abhorrent that Iranian officials continue to use dual and foreign nationals detained in Iran as bargaining chips. It is also particularly disappointing that British authorities did not do enough to ensure Iran would uphold the conditions they agreed to for Tahbaz’s furlough.”

In an interview published by BBC on Tuesday, Ashuri said, "Sometimes I think he should have been on the return plane instead of me. He is ill and needs medical attention”, adding that it's really painful that so many good people are left behind.

Attacks on the region's capital Erbil and the federal government's legal actions have demonstrated the resistance to development in the energy-rich region.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said early this month it struck Israeli "strategic centers" in Erbil in retaliation for an Israeli air raid that killed two of its members in Syria.

But most of the 12 missiles fired into the Kurdish capital hit the villa of a Kurdish businessman involved in the autonomous region's energy sector.

A Kurdish gas export plan could threaten Iran's place as a major supplier to Iraq and Turkey when its economy is reeling from international sanctions, sources told Reuters. The pipeline could send energy via Turkey to Europe at a time that Iran is under US sanctions and its ally, Russia wants to preserve its dominance in Europe’s markets.

The attack was shortly after Iraq's federal court deemed an oil and gas law regulating the oil industry in Iraqi Kurdistan unconstitutional and demanded that Kurdish authorities hand over their crude supplies.

Speaking at an industry event in the United Arab Emirates, Barzani said the court ruling was political and that Kurdistan is negotiating with the Iraqi federal government to preserve what he called their constitutional rights.

Reporting by Reuters

A government source said on Monday that Canada is expected to call on Safer Skies forum for improving international rules governing investigations for air accidents.

According to the source, Canadian Transport Minister Omar Alghabra is to tell the forum that reforms are especially needed in cases where the main country probing a crash, caused or participated in the downing of the aircraft.

Hosted virtually by Transport Canada and the Safer Skies Consultative Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday, the forum brings international representatives and the civil aviation industry, including the International Air Transport Association, to mitigate airspace risks over conflict zones.

Canada's Transportation Safety Board (TSB), an independent agency, called for such changes in 2021, arguing Iran's downing of flight PS752 showed the limitations of current rules.

The TSB argued that under those rules, Iran retained overall control of the investigation into the crash which killed all 176 onboard, while the country's military was implicated in the event leading to an "unprecedented" situation.

After three days of denial, Tehran claimed Revolutionary Guards “accidentally” shot down the Boeing 737 jet by two surface-to-air missiles in the tense aftermath of Iran's missile attack on United States military bases in Iraq on January 8, 2020.

In a recent interview, Ruhollah Mo’men-Nasab -- a former head of Culture Ministry’s Digital Media Center and the current secretary of cyberspace activities of the Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces political party – talked about their tactics to disrupt the flow of information and tarnish the image of activists.

He is an outspoken opponent of social media platforms and free internet access, describing them as espionage tools, and has been a consultant and staunch supporter of the bill pushed by hardliners to limit internet in Iran, entitled 'Legislation to Protect Cyberspace Users'.

In a video of his remarks that surfaced last week, Mo’men-Nasab seems quite pleased with the result of their misinformation campaigns, elaborating that they made numerous counterfeit twitter accounts with photos and names of influential rights and political activists “who were against the revolution and interests” of the regime.

Describing the disinformation network as part of a psychological warfare, Mo’men-Nasab said they have made software for the tweets and retweets and had created at least 256 accounts to make the process faster and more effective.

Twitter and Facebook have been suspending or shutting down hundreds of Iranian fake accounts over recent years, suspected of spreading disinformation, even in during elections in the United States.