Iran Showcases Drones Amid Stalled Nuclear Talks

Ali Salehi, Tehran’s public and revolutionary court prosecutor said that a man fired at police officers stationed in front of the building of Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.

He added "four police officers" were injured in the incident and taken to hospital for treatment. According to reports, a passerby was also injured during the shooting. 

Noting that the assailant was also shot and arrested, Salehi said that the man also killed four people and injured two others in the city of Shahriar west of Tehran with a firearm on Friday and fled the scene. 

Hossein Rahimi, the head of the Tehran police, said that preliminary investigations showed the assailant committed the criminal act following a years-long property dispute with some of the victims in the earlier shooting.

Rahimi added that the assailant was spotted Saturday morning near the Martyrs Foundation building and was identified by the officers present at the scene, and he immediately started shooting at them.

No further details were immediately available about the case, but Rahimi said investigation is still underway about the case. 

The sides discussed security, with their interests further aligned in recent years over Iran as Jerusalem and Riyadh prepare to normalize relations, the network said, with the senior Israeli official warmly received at a palace in the Saudi capital.

The US National Security Council Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, and State Department energy envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier this week for talks that included global energy supplies, Iran, and other regional issues.

Axios reported this week that the Biden administration had been mediating between Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt on transferring two islands – Tiran and Sanafir – in the Red Sea from Egyptian to Saudi sovereignty with Israeli “consent.” If successful, this could be a first step to ‘normalizing’ Saudi-Israel relations.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several Iranian military commanders and politicians have cautioned Arab states against following the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in ‘normalizing’ relations with Israel. The Arab League position, dating to 2002 and proposed by Saudi Arabia, is that Arab states should not do so until Israel recognizes a Palestinian state in the territories it has militarily occupied since 1967.

Iran and Saudi relations have thawed in recent months with talks mediated by Iraq. Turkish President Recep Erdogan also recently visited Saudi Arabia.

Javad Hedayati, director-general of the Transit and International Affairs Department of Iran Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization (RMTO), told Shargh daily Friday that Pakistan had intensified barriers facing Iranian truckers.“It has been about a month since Iranian drivers are facing new restrictions…and the flow of goods…has almost stopped, while Pakistani drivers are coming to Iran as usual,” he said.

Pakistan imposed heavy tariffs on Iranian truckers in November and was unwilling to issue visas for Iranian drivers, forcing them to unload their cargoes at the border and pass them to Pakistani truckers, Hedayati said: “This has led to a very long unloading and reloading process and…[to] a line of trucks at the border as well as a lot of damage to the goods,” he said.

"Pakistani is making various excuses," said Mahmoud Tohidast, board member of the Iran-Pakistan Joint Chamber of Commerce, who put bilateral trade at $1.3 billion despite difficulties.

Thursday’s meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos between Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari led to assurances of co-operation.

But relations strained recently over Pakistani allegations of Iranian involvement with a militant separatist group. With a $90 billion external debt, Pakistan also faces acute economic problems and may want to restrict Iranian goods made more competitive by the falling rial.

The man, Mufti Alim Noorani, with no diplomatic experience or general education has been appointed as third secretary of Afghan embassy in Tehran.

Afghanistan International published copy of a letter the embassy sent to Kabul, saying that none of the mission’s housing facilities has enough space for the 16-member family. The embassy has several residences in Elahiyeh district of Tehran, an affluent area.

In the letter the embassy requests $2,300 a month for renting an appropriate residence for Noorani, which together with real estate fees would total $28,750 for the year.

Since the Taliban seized power last August, poverty and hunger have gripped Afghanistan, with international organizations issuing warnings and other countries discussing how to aid the isolated government.

The United Nations has said that 98 percent of the population is under-nourished, while most Western assistance has been stopped after the Taliban takeover.

The new rulers, who used widespread violence against civilians to weaken the elected government and come to power, had promised to form an inclusive government, but so far all important posts have been given to trusted members of the secretive group.

Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press on Friday indicate the completion of the construction of the Shahid Mahdavi support ship, which appears to be a retrofit of an Iranian cargo ship known as the Sarvin.

“They are looking beyond the Persian Gulf and into the blue waters of the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea and the northern Indian Ocean,” Farzin Nadimi, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy who studies the Iranian military, told AP.

The Sarvin arrived off Bandar Abbas in late July last year and then switched off its transponders. By Jan. 29, satellite photos analyzed by the AP showed the vessel at drydock at Shahid Darvishi Marine Industries, a company associated with Iran’s Defense Ministry west of Bandar Abbas.

Last Saturday, the IRGC-affiliated Fars News agency said the Guard’s navy was due to commission ‘Shahid Mahdavi’ as a forward base ship that will be among Iran’s largest vessels.

The ship was named in honor of Nader Mahdavi, one of seven IRGC personnel killed in an engagement with the United States navy in October 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war.

Aurora Intel, defense analysts, said the ship – formerly called Savin, Sarita, Dandle, Twelfth Ocean, Iran Esfahan – is a 22-year-old container vessel with a nominal capacity of 3,300 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs).