Iran Reportedly Holds Two Belgians As Brussels Plans Prisoner Swap

According to videos published on social media, retirees took to the streets in several cities such as Kerman, Karaj, Zanjan, Arak, Shush, Shushtar, and Ahvaz to protest against the Raisi administration for pushing in parliament a much smaller increase of only 10 percent while the latest inflation rate figure stands at 55 percent.

They say the administration’s decision to increase pensions by 10 percent is "illegal" and "unfair".

Denouncing President Ebrahim Raisi and his government, the pensioners chanted slogans such as "Parliament, government; both lie to the nation."

Retirees are demanding pension increases in par with rising prices of essential foods, saying that the current payments are not in line with decrees by the Supreme Labor Council, which had stipulated a 38-percent increase in the minimum wage.

With food prices rising faster after four years of United States’ ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Iranian workers and retirees have been holding regular protests or strikes to demand higher salaries. Last month, Iran’s currency fell to a historic low of 333,000 rials to the US dollar in June.

During the past weeks, widespread protests by workers,shop owners, and teachers protesting against poverty, inflation, and low wages, have been met with heavy-handed crackdown and numerous arrests by the security forces.

According to a Syrian military source quoted by SANA state media Saturday morning, several missiles hit positions in and around al-Hamidiyah area south of Tartus near the border with Lebanon, injuring a young man and a woman and causing material damage.

SANA said the missiles targeted “several poultry farms in the vicinity of Hamidiyah,” but the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the animal husbandries are believed to be used by Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for military purposes.

Later on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian arrived in Damascus and met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in a visit reportedly aimed at facilitating peace and security between Syria and Turkey.

The strike occurred less than a month after an Israeli attack on Damascus airport targeting Tehran’s assets on the ground, a regular occurrence in recent years.

Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes mostly since 2017 against what it has described as Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces have deployed over the last decade to support Assad in Syria's war.

Tartus, along with the Khmeimim air base in the nearby province of Latakia, are the main Russian bases in the country, which are reportedly being taken over by Iran forces and Hezbollah as Russia has begun pulling out its troops from Syria to bolster forces in Ukraine.

Mohsen Akhavan, who is the imam of the congregational prayer at Esfahan’s Baqiyatallah Mosque, was shot and is now hospitalized.

Akhavan, who holds the clerical rank of hojatoleslam, was returning home from the mosque after leading the morning prayer when the attack occurred. 

Several Iranian clerics have come under attack by angry Iranians recently as rising prices and constant protests have led to a tense environment in the country.

In early June, the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader in the central city of Esfahan, Yousef Tabatabaei-Nejad, was attacked by a young man carrying a knife. He is known for his annoying remarks about women and social liberties, as well as recent comments to whitewash the Iranian government's decisions to stop food subsidies, which led to a sudden jump in prices. 

Earlier in the year, a member of the Assembly of the Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers, Mohammad Taghi Fazel Meybodi, said that clerics and seminary students are avoiding their usual garb for fear of being insulted in public, adding that the people in Iran have a negative view of the clergy, and blame them for the current hardships they experience, including high prices and corruption.

Another well-known cleric, Mohammad-Reza Zaeri, also talked about the growing hatred and grudge towards the clergy in January, warning of a crisis unfolding in society.

Local media reported on Friday that Israel’s Privacy Protection Authority confirmed the incident, saying that it occurred two weeks ago.

Iranian hacker group, named Sharp Boys, claimed responsibility, saying in a photo posted on their Telegram channel that "Wherever you go, even on your trips, you are under our control. Remember our name."

The Privacy Protection Authority added following the hack it had immediately contacted the owner of Gol Tours LTD company, that owns over 20 popular travel booking websites, in an effort to address the security breach and make the necessary modifications but was met with a refusal to cooperate reportedly over the costs of the changes.

Authority officials raided the company’s offices on Thursday and seized its servers until the investigation over the cyberattack is complete.

The leaked data include telephone numbers, addresses, dates and locations of booked vacations, and sensitive medical information, the authority said in a statement.

Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said a cyber unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard -- called “Shahid Kaveh” -- conducted research to damage ships, gas stations and industrial plants in several countries including Britain, the US, France and Israel.

Gantz hinted that Israel -- which is widely believed to have waged cyber war against Iran's nuclear facilities and other infrastructure -- may retaliate physically against enemy hackers.

The news of the trip to Moscow was released by the twitter account of the Russian permanent mission to the international organizations in Vienna Friday night, but not covered in Iran’s state media. 

During his stay, Bagheri-Kani held a meeting with his counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov while Moscow’s lead negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov was also present in the session. 

Ulyanov described the meeting as “a very professional exchange of views” on the current situation around the nuclear deal (the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and prospects of the Vienna negotiations.

He called on the US to “demonstrate greater flexibility,” noting that his assessment is “despite all the difficulties, the nuclear deal still can be restored.”

Earlier in the week in Doha, Bagheri-Kani met Enrique Mora, the European Union official who chaired year-long talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 landmark deal.

On Friday, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo called on both the United States and the Islamic Republic “to quickly mobilize in the same spirit and commitment to resume cooperation under the JCPOA.”

Moreover, in a Thursday statement ahead of a Security Council meeting on the implementation of resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, the UK, France and Germany called on Iran to stop and reverse its nuclear escalation, return to full cooperation with IAEA and seize the offer on the table without further delay.