Germany Expels Iranian Cleric Over Support For Shiite Extremists

In a phone conversation with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Saturday, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said “in order to reach a good and lasting agreement, it is necessary for the other side to give up its double standards and contradictory behavior."

He added that the Islamic Republic still believes that "diplomacy is the best and most appropriate" solution to the outstanding issues on the revival of the deal,” reiterating that "Iran has never distanced itself from the negotiating table.”

“If the United States wants to continue its unconstructive behavior, it will face our proportionate response," Amir-Abdollahian emphasized.

The resolution called on Iran to engage with the IAEA without delay and expressed “profound concern” at Iran’s failure to satisfy the agency over traces of uranium found at three undeclared sites and highlighted earlier in June in a report by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi.

The resolution came as year-long talks paused since March between Iran and five world powers aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

Following the resolution, Iran retaliated, telling the IAEA it plans to remove more monitoring equipment, but intends to maintain a basic level of monitoring and inspectors’ access as required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In the video, originally published in 2016 in support of the Syrian children suffering in the country’s civil war, what Ronaldo really says is calling on the kids not to lose hope. “I am a very famous player but you are the true heroes.”

In the version the IRIB broadcast, Ronaldo’s voice is dubbed in Persian as saying that he cannot tolerate the Israeli spectators as they are the most hated for him, adding that he does not exchange his jersey with assassins. The Islamic Republic’s state channel also referred to a hoax back in 2013 as true, that falsely claimed Ronaldo refused to exchange his t-shirt with an Israeli player after a match with its national football team. 

In Reality, the video showed a Portuguese player who had swapped his shirt with an Israeli player walking past Ronaldo, but some anti-Israeli media reported it as if Ronaldo refused to exchange his shirt. The Portuguese player is easily recognized from the dark colored shorts he is wearing.

The state broadcaster aired the fake video about a month after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei criticized Ronaldo’s fame among students in Iranian schools. Khamenei compared Ronaldo with an Iranian scientist, Saeed Kazemi Ashtiani, the head of Iran’s Royan Infertility Research Center who died in 2006, saying that students know Ronaldo but not Ashtiani.

“We shan’t spend foreign policy treasures for the success of diplomacy; instead, we will sacrifice ourselves to achieve foreign policy objectives,” Bagheri-Kani tweeted in English, which was the translation of a Persian tweet same day.

This was the most confusing post, which led hundreds of Iranians to joke in reply. Some said about the original Persian text that they could not understand what the diplomat meant, and maybe it was “bad Google translation from Russian.”

One user went as far as to say that “surely Putin send you the text in Russian and the translation came out bad.”

Some thought Bagheri-Kani was sending cryptic messages about the stalled nuclear talks with the United States, not knowing to take them as a positive or negative sign.

Etemad Online website on Friday clarified that Bagheri-Kani apparently delivered a speech on Thursday and the tweets were quotes from his remarks, taken out of context and sounding vague and even poetic.

“The same Iran which managed to defeat the U.S. 'maximum pressure campaign', will not allow the Zionists to legitimize Iranophobia and anti-Iran campaign by spearheading the “maximum blackmail game,” was another tweet.

The main factor that surprized the public was Bagheri-Kani’s habit of not tweeting very often and then sending several messages in quick succession.

Raisi said on Friday that he is “surprised by the Americans who send messages for negotiation and agreement and add to their list of sanctions,” noting that “The world should give us the right not to trust the United States because it breaks its pacts”

He responded to Washington’s move on Thursday to sanction firms and individuals for violating US sanctions by exporting petrochemicals. 

The Vienna talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nucellar deal between Tehran and world powers have stalled since March mainly because of Iran’s demand for the US to remove the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from its terrorism list (FTO) and the recent missile attacks have shed more doubts on whether President Joe Biden’s administration would take such a step.

In a clear move to pressure Iran on stalled nuclear negotiations, the Biden administration sanctioned Chinese, Emirati and Iranian companies engaged in illicit export of Iranian petrochemicals.

Iranian crude exports declined in May because of Russian competition, as it offers cheaper oil to China. Iran’s income from oil products and petrochemicals was $23 billion from March 2021 to March 2022 and it aimed to boost it to $27 billion.

The embassy released a statement on Thursday, saying that the Boeing 747 registered as a Venezuelan cargo plane was used by the Iranian company Mahan Air and transported “a group of Iranian officials, including a senior executive of the airline Qeshm Fars Air.” It was referring to Gholamreza Ghasemi, who apparently was the pilot and is a member of the IRGC and a former board member of Fars Air Qeshm accused of transporting weapons for Hezbollah during the civil war in Syria. 

“The State of Israel is particularly concerned about the activity of the Iranian airlines Mahan Air and Qeshm Fars Air in Latin America, companies dedicated to arms trafficking and the transfer of people and equipment that operate for the Quds Force,” the statement read. 

The embassy referred to an assassination attempt on Israeli citizens in the city of Bogotá by “criminals who worked for the Quds Force in Colombia,” adding that such events revealed that IRGC’s Quds force tries to consolidate its influence in South America. 

Argentina said on June 15 no member of IRGC Quds Force was among the crew, and Ghasemi just shared a name with a Quds Force member. 

Ghasemi is also reportedly a relative of current Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi, whose appointment by President Ebrahim Raisi triggered condemnation from Argentina given his suspected role in the 1994 AMIA bombing that killed 85 people and injured over 300.

Iran has denied that the Boeing 747 belongs to Iran’s Mahan Airlines, sanctioned by the US in 2008 for links to the Quds (Qods) Force.