More Evidence Of Iran Missiles For Yemen As Biden Gulf Visit Looms

Expressing worries over the resurgence of the pandemic across the country, the spokesman for Iran’s Covid-19 taskforce, Abbas Shirozhan, said on Saturday that four cities are now "red," 14 cities are categorized as "orange,” and 142 cities as “yellow.”

Shirozhan called on the people to use masks, especially in the cities with higher numbers of people infected with the virus. 

Last week, the Health Ministry announced that the number of people hospitalized due to Covid-19 complications has tripled, as new variants are about to sweep across the country.

Masoud Younesian, the secretary of the epidemiology and research committee of the national coronavirus taskforce, said on July 1 that two new subvariant of Omicron, namely BA4 and BA5 -- which started in the African continent -- may soon prevail over the country.

Iran’s homegrown Covid vaccine factories are shutting down for lack of demand as many vaccinated with foreign vaccines refuse to get homegrown ones as boosters.

According to the latest official figures, nearly 65 million Iranians have had one dose, 58 million two doses but only 27 million have had a third shot of the vaccine. Vaccine imports stopped a few months ago and the only vaccines available for a booster now are homegrown variants.

The number of deaths in Iran since Covid-19 began has been 300,000 higher than in previous years, suggesting pandemic deaths may be more than officially reportedfigure ofaround 141,000 deaths.

The whole scheme of producing domestic vaccines now seems little more than wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and precious time in preventing tens of thousands of deaths in 2021.

According to the latest official figures, nearly 65 million Iranians have had one dose, 58 million two doses but only 27 million have had a third shot of the vaccine. Of the total of 150 million doses administered so far, the Chinese Cinopharm accounts for over 80 percent and AstraZeneca for around 10 percent. Vaccine imports stopped a few months ago and the only vaccines available for a booster now are homegrown variants.

Only a total of 20 million (13%) used in the vaccination program so far were produced by the seven Iranian developers that received support and funding from the government. None of Iran’s seven homegrown vaccines has received the approval of the World Health Organization.

Some Iranian physicians believe many Iranians are refusing to get a third shot because they were inoculated with foreign-made vaccines before but will now have to get homegrown ones with doubtful efficacy against new Covid variants.

Lack of demand has led to homegrown Covid vaccine production lines shutting down one after the other and millions of doses are near expiration in storage.

All domestic developers, including the Barekat Foundation and Razi Institute, for instance, hav millions of doses of unsold vaccines which will soon expire. Developers will go bankrupt, they say, if the government does not purchase their products but the government already has 50 million doses in storage and no cash to even pay the rest of its debts, around $250 million, for the 50 million doses of homegrown vaccines it purchased before.

Some of the vaccine producers, including the state-owned Barekat Foundation, received hundreds of millions of dollars to start their vaccine development program from scratch despite having had no experience in the field.

Mohammad Mokhber, the head of the Barekat Foundation who is now vice president in President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration, repeatedly promised that the foundation would be delivering fifty million doses of its product, CoVIran-Barekat, before August 2021 to be used in the vaccination program. These promises never materialized.

Iran's national vaccination plan did not make any significant progress before presidency was handed over to Raisi in August last year. Raisi has repeatedly boasted about the success of his government in mass vaccination and Covid management.

But critics say centers of power controlled by hardliners impeded fromer President Hassan Rouhani’s vaccine purchases and once he was gone, allowed vaccines already ordered to flow into carry out the vaccination plans and take credit for it.

This resulted in a new wave of infection in the summer of 2021 to kill around 40,000 unvaccinated citizens.

The Rouhani government had ordered 16.5 million doses of these vaccines, the only ones approved by World Health Organization (WHO) at the time, through WHO’s Covax program, but Khamenei banned the purchase of American and British Covid vaccines in early January 2021 putting forth a conspiracy theory that the two counties could not be trusted.

Some hardliners including a top IRGC official even claimed that there was evidence that foreign companies producing Covid-19 vaccines wanted to reduce the world population by 20 percent or that their vaccines were meant to use as biological weapons against Iranians.

The 2022 World Games, an international multi-sport event meant for disciplines or categories that were not contested in the Olympic Games, was inaugurated in Birmingham, Alabama, on July 7. 

The president of the Iranian federation, Gholamreza Shabanibahar, said Iran plans to voice its official protest to the World Archery Federation in the coming days.

Last week, the Iranian karate team was also denied visas to enter the US for the World Games. Fox News claimed that the national team has direct links to the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) that is designated as a terrorist organization by Washington. The report said opponents of the regime and Gold Star families – a name given to immediate family members of the killed US service members -- called for an immediate ban.

Beverly Wolfer, sister of Major Stuart Adam Wolfer, who was killed in Iraq on April 6, 2008 by an Iranian-backed terror cell, said, “Allowing Iranian sports teams to compete in the US legitimizes a terrorist regime by flying its flag and playing its anthem on American soil.” 

The captain of the karate team, Zabihollah Poursheib, told ISNA, "America did not issue visas for various teams, including wrestling, which shows that the Americans mix non-sports and political issues with sports."

The Islamic Republic, especially since Ebrahim Raisi took office, has appointed several former IRGC officers as top managers of government organizations such as sports federations.

In May, Canada Soccer cancelled a controversial friendly match with Iran’s national team after many Iranians objected to the visit of Iranian football officials.

“The IRGC has for many years employed criminal gangs and mafia [like groups] in various countries including Turkey for terrorist operations,” an Israeli intelligence official told Iran International’s correspondent in Tel Aviv regarding Turkish media’s recent allegations that the Iran’s Guards had employed organized criminals for foiled attacks on Israeli tourists last month.

The official who did not want to be named alleged that the IRGC’s extra-territorial arm, the Qods (Quds) Force and the its Intelligence Organization (SAS) have used criminal gangs, drug traffickers, and even ordinary criminals for such operations in Turkey, South America, and Cyprus.

Turkey’s intelligence organization (MIT) and Israel’s Mossad last month said they had foiled alleged Iran-hatched plots to abduct and assassinate Israeli tourists in Turkey.

On June 23, just before the arrival of then-Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to Turkey, MIT revealed that it had detained eight suspects, allegedly working for an Iranian intelligence cell, who were involved in the plot.

The suspects who were arrested in raids on three separate houses in Istanbul said that they were not in direct contact with Iranian intelligence and took their orders from the leader of an Iranian organized crime group who was in Iran, through WhatsApp, Turkish media reported.

Turkey’s Yeni Şafak has reported that the cell was plotting two different operations, one to abduct former Israeli diplomat Yossi Levi-Sfari and his partner, and another against three Israeli women who resided in an Istanbul hotel.

According to Turkish media, three of the six Iranian suspects, have said in their interrogations that the terrorist operations were ordered by Iranian intelligence. One of the Iranian suspects who had the actual assassin’s role traveled to Iran four times in two months and met with a criminal group’s leader in Iran four days before his arrest.

The Iranian members of the of the terrorist cell had entered Turkey legally two months earlier but two of them had used forged passports, Turkish media say.

The Israeli intelligence official cited Mansour Rasouli, an Iranian national reportedly abducted and interrogated inside Iran by Israeli Mossad, as an example.

On April 30, Israeli media released an audio recording with the photo of a man introduced as Iranian national Mansour Rasouli, 52, who they claimed the Mossad had interrogated inside Iran. Israeli media did not provide a source for the audio file that they said Mossad operatives posing as Iranian secret service agents recorded at Rasouli's home in Iran.

In the audio file Rasouli admitted that that he had been instructed by the IRGC to establish an operational network to assassinate an Israeli diplomat in Istanbul, a Germany-based US general, and a journalist in France. Officials in Tehran never commented on Israeli media’s claims but Rasouli himself later released a video online in which he said he had been coerced by the Mossadto confess to terror plots.

In past few months there were multiple mysterious incidents in which IRGC officers and operatives were killed or died in unexplained circumstances. Iran blamed Israel for some of the incidents. Israel has not taken responsibility for the assassinations but has not denied involvement, either.

The IRGC’s counter-intelligence chief Hossein Taeb was replaced last month. Taeb was recently harshly criticized by social media activists and some politicians for failing to detect and prevent Israel's operations in Iran.

The foreign ministers of the United States, France, Germany and the deputy foreign minister of the United Kingdom made the call in a meeting of the Transatlantic Quad foreign ministers on the sidelines of the Group of 20 ministerial meeting in Bali, Indonesia on Friday.

According to a readout of the meeting by the US Department of State, Secretary Antony Blinken, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and UK Second Permanent Under Secretary and Political Director Tim Barrow expressed concern about the pace of developments in Iran’s nuclear program. 

They reiterated their commitment to a mutual return to full compliance with the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), calling on Iran to drop its extraneous demands and to quickly agree to the deal that is currently available.

Following the failure of Tehran-Washington proximity talks in Qatar last week, the US State Department says there is no plan for another round of talks for now. There has been a deal on the table that is more or less finalized for several months now, he said.

On Wednesday, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited Iran to discuss the latest development on kickstarting the nuclear talks, which had stalled for months.