World Cup Draw Puts Iran, US Teams In Same Group

He announced the shortage in power production on the sidelines of a visit to a power plant construction project in the northeastern province of Razavi Khorasan on Thursday.

Mehrabian went on to say that 27 power plant units, generating about 4,500 megawatts of electricity, will enter the country’s grid this summer.

Mehrabian is in the province as part of a large delegation of ministers and officials accompanying President Ebrahim Raisi’s to his hometown, where they made a series of promises about different projects and measures to be realized this year.

According to recent data released by the ministry, power plants that were commissioned during the previous Iranian year (ended on March 20) only added a cumulative capacity of 965 megawatts to the supply network despite the announced target of adding 3,500 megawatts during the year.

Electricity consumption has been increasing in Iran because of extremely low prices, considered a subsidy in the state-controlled economy. Usage has reached to around 60,000 megawatt hours, while both power plant capacity and their fuel supply remains inadequate. At the same time, Iran exports electricity to Iraq while blackouts happen regularly at home.

Late in March, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterated “Iran's readiness to establish two 1,000-megawatt power stations in Lebanon”.

Ambassador Tom Nides told Israel’s Channel 12 news on Thursday, “Israel can do and take all the steps it needs to take to protect the state of Israel”.

He added that “If we have a deal, the Israelis’ hands are not tied. If we don’t have a deal, the Israelis’ hands are certainly not tied”, noting that “We’re not going to tell the government what to do”.

About briefing Israel on the latest developments of the Vienna nuclear talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the ambassador pointed out, “The Israelis know very clearly exactly what is going on. I’m not suggesting they necessarily like it always, but there are no secrets here”.

During a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said, "We have disagreements about a nuclear agreement and its consequences, but open and honest dialogue is part of the strength of our friendship. Israel and the United States will continue to work together to prevent a nuclear Iran”.

There are media reports that an air defense pact between Israel and friendly regional countries is in the works to confront threats posed by Iranian drones and missiles.

The committee’s twitter account carried the message Thursday, deploring “Iran’s attack on women peacefully protesting its discriminatory stadium ban...” Security forces denied women entry into a stadium in Mashhad, north-east Iran, to watch a FIFA World Cup qualifier between Iran and Lebanon, reportedly using pepper spray to disperse them.

Although Iran won the game 2-0, thereby qualifying for the World Cup in Qatar, some Iranians are urging FIFA to bar the country from the tournament, with #Fifabaniri (FIFA ban Islamic Republic of Iran) and other hashtags rising to the top of most-used hashtags in Persian-language Twitter.

In a letter to FIFA's deputy secretary general, Mattias Grafstrom, of the United for Navid group set up after the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari in September 2020, backed the call, alleging Iran was practicing "gender apartheid" and continuing “to violate the Olympic Charter and FIFA regulations."

A campaign inside Iran sees some former and current members of Iran's national team pledging not to enter stadiums as long as women are not allowed. “I hope that from now on during home matches, our dear women can also spectate so we can make them happy as well,” Alireza Jahanbakhsh, an Iranian international who plays club football in the Netherlands, told state television.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been listed by the United States since 2019 as a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ a designation otherwise reserved for non-state bodies. Ghorbani, a Canadian resident, was travelling Friday to perform at a concert marking Noruz (Nowruz), Iranian New Year, at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center, California, Saturday when he was questioned by agents at a Toronto airport and denied entry to the US.

“He got on his flight, sat on his seat and some [US immigration] officers got on the flight and took him out,” Alireza Ardekani, executive director of Los Angeles-area nonprofit Farhang (culture) Foundation, joint host of the event, told the Los Angeles Times.

“They interrogated him for nearly four hours and eventually told him his visa was going to be canceled and he could no longer travel to the US,” Ardekani said Tuesday, adding that he had learned that Ghorbani’s denial of travel likely stemmed from the 49-year-old’s service decades earlier in the IRGC.

The Iranian Canadian Congress (ICC) in a statement on Twitter said it was concerned at Ghorbani's detention and interrogation and had brought the issue of the US refusing entry to Iranian-Canadians conscripted by the IRGC to the attention of Canadian government officials on many occasions.

"We continue our efforts to end discriminatory behavior against our community," the statement said. While Canadian permanent residents may need a non-immigrant visa to enter the US, the US State Department stipulates that “members of a designated FTO, if they are aliens, are inadmissible to and, in certain circumstances, removable from the United States.”

The IRGC is part of the Iranian Armed Forces, which also includes the ‘regular’ Army and Law Enforcement, all under the overall command of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The three branches each includes young men serving a 21-month compulsory military service

Wider worry

Around one-fourth of IRGC's 190,0000 are conscripts and Ghorbani, who like many other young men do military service after graduating from high school, was probably assigned to the IRGC when drafted three decades ago.

Masih Fouladi, deputy director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Los Angeles Times, that the case illustrated a wider worry for Iranians in north America.

“They may have served 20, 25 or 30 years ago, and many of them may have served in clerical roles, nothing that had anything to do with combat,” he said. “And now they’re facing obstacles to residency status… I think [the designation] was intended to marginalize Iran’s government, but the truth it is has really impacted Americans here who identify as Iranian.”

Ghorbani has performed in many countries including with the Vancouver Opera Orchestra in 2019. Among international awards, he took the silver medal of the Global Music Awards in 2020 for outstanding achievement. Singer Sina Sarlak filled in for Ghorbani Saurday, performing “Ey Iran!”

The blast and the blaze happened in Kavoshgaran Mahshahr petrochemical plant in the port city of Mahshahr in Khuzestan province in the early hours of Friday.

According to a spokesman of the company, Mohsen Adibi, the fire has been contained and the cause of the accident is being investigated.

The CEO of the economic zone, Omid Shahidinia, said a tanker loading a hydrocarbon product caught fire and it spread to other parts of the plant.

In February, the petrochemical company came under attack reportedly by armed men, who set a big fire to a dozen vehicles.

The public relations manager of the firm, Hamid Danesh, told Fars news at the time that “breaking the windows of the security compound, like in this incident, clashing with the security forces of the company and also theft have been among similar cases in recent months."

There have been many explosions and fires in Iran’s military and industrial sites since mid-2020, with authorities not giving a full explanation in many instances. However, they have blamed Israel for a series of spectacular sabotage attacks on nuclear facilities, including two explosions at Natanz uranium enrichment center.

The oil and gas industries have also experienced many incidents of exploding pipelines and refineries where large fires were reported.