Iran Summons Swedish Ambassador Over Quran Burning Incident

The announcement on Thursday came after the US said earlier this week it was sending more warplanes to the region to deter Iran from harassing and attacking commercial ships in the strategic waterways.

“In response to recent attempts by Iran to threaten the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters, the Secretary of Defense has ordered the deployment of a portion of the BATAAN Amphibious Readiness Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit comprised of the USS Bataan, USS Carter Hall,” and associated personnel to CENTCOM’s area of responsibility the Defense Department said in a statement. The region covers the larger Middle East area including the Red Sea and Parts of the Indian Ocean.

According to the US Naval Institute on July 10, the USS Bataan group includes almost 4,000 sailors and Marines, and they had departed from Virginia and North Carolina.

“The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is based in North Carolina and includes the command element; the aviation combat element, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron, 162 (Reinforced); the ground combat element, Battalion Landing Team 1/6; and the logistics combat element,” USNI said.

The Pentagon said July 17 that it was sending additional F-35 and F-16 fighter jets, along with a warship to the Middle East, in a bid to monitor key waterways in the region following Iran's seizure and harassment of commercial shipping vessels in recent months.

"The (Pentagon) is increasing our presence and ability to monitor the (Strait of Hormuz) and surrounding waters," Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters. It was not clear where exactly the additional jets would be placed and how long they would stay in the region.

Announcing the deployment of the expeditionary force the Defense Department also said in its Thursday Statement, “Through these actions, the United States is demonstrating commitment to ensuring freedom of navigation and deterring Iranian destabilization activities in the region.”

Iran’s latest attempts to interfere with commercial shipping occurred earlier this month when it tried to seize two vessels. The US Navy announced July 5 that it prevented Iranian naval forces from diverting the vessels including the Richmond Voyager, a super tanker managed by Chevron in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrowest part of the Persian Gulf.

Since 2019, there have been a series of attacks on shipping in strategic Persian Gulf waters at times of tension between the United States and Iran. The Revolutionary Guard has seized or attacked 15 vessels since 2019, according to the US Navy. Over the years, Iranian speedboats also harassed US Navy ships, sometimes in dangerous maneuvers.

With the 2015 Iran nuclear deal effectively dead, Iran's relations with the West have deteriorated over the last year, with Tehran supplying hundreds of kamikaze drones to Russia that have been regularly used to attack civilian and infrastructure targets in Ukraine. The US and its allies have warned Tehran to seize its military cooperation with Moscow that can expand into supplying ballistic missile later this year when a UN restriction on Iran expires.

“We will continue to work with like-minded allies and partners who are committed to the free flow of commerce to take appropriate, coordinated actions against threats to this fundamental principle of the rules-based international order,” the Defense Department said.

Closing at 1.95m points on Monday after weeks of turbulence, the main index dropped to the levels seen in mid-March. By Wednesday it rose again to slightly over 2 million points.

But this appears to have done little to reassure neither small investors who have withdrawn much of their capital from TSE in recent weeks for the fear of losing all, nor big investment firms.

“The continuation of negative tremors has a key message [for investors]. It is a signal that speeded up the exodus of big investors and resulted in distrust in the market,” Donya-ye Eghtesad newspaper, which focuses on business and economy, wrote Tuesday.

Experts say there are several reasons for TSE’s troubles these days but the decision of the government earlier this week to increase the price of gas it sells to industries which particularly affects the hard currency earning petrochemical industries was the major reason for the capital outflow from TSE.

 The few industries with export markets such as steel and petrochemical represent most of the trading in the exchange.

According to Donya-ye Eghtesad, however, in the past few days shares of most companies have dropped irrespective of whether their value is gauged in hard currency, like exporters, or in the national currency rial, such as construction firms and automakers.

“The massive collapse of the stock market is intentional and the managed work of the government,” Dr Mahsima Pooyafard, US-based university professor, said in a tweet Tuesday, arguing that the government of President Ebrahim Raisi has announced several economic decisions such as increasing certain tariffs that highly affect the profitability of the stock market and drive people to dump their stocks. The collapse of the stock market, she said, would help the government to resolve some of its own cash problems. 

The index has been in decline due to political uncertainties since May 7, a day dubbed as “the Black Monday of TSE”, with a handful of small peaks when hopes for reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal helped the index rise momentarily. 

Since the United States imposed economic sanction on Iran in 2018, the stock market has risen 24-fold. Half of this astonishing rise is because the Iranian currency has fallen 12-fold in the same period and the market has experienced share price inflation.

This phenomenon, the 12-fold rise of the index in real terms, contradicts other economic indices and prices. 

Economic journalist Ehsan Soltani in Tehran has pointed out that based on official statistics, since the first quarter of the Iranian calendar year starting on March 21, 2017, Iran's GDP, consumption by families, and the minimum wage have increased by 750, 550, and 470 percent (in rials), respectively.

“But the value of TSE companies has grown by 2,450 percent and the dollar exchange rate by 1,270 percent,” he wrote and argued that the massive increase in the value of TSE companies is not normal and has only been achievable through government manipulation.

Capital market analysts predict funds withdrawn from the TSE by small investors flow to the parallel gold, property, and foreign exchange markets. This will push the exchange rates up and let the government sell its own petrodollars at a higher rate. 

The government decision to sell its own assets through the TSE in early 2020, when the index stood at less than 500,000 points, is often cited as an example of manipulation of the stock market. 

Small investors were encouraged by the government of President Hassan Rouhani to commit capital to the market amid the decline in the value of the rial. The index rose to 2 million points by mid-year but soon tumbled down to 1.2 million, wiping out the savings of small investors. 

At the time, the Rouhani’s hardliner critics alleged that the government had intentionally drawn people to invest in the stock market, mostly representing public and quasi-public companies, to remedy its huge budget deficit. 

Mohammad-Reza Gharaei Ashtiani was asked on Wednesday about the status of the deal – which was purportedly finalized last year. He replied the country has the capability to produce the fighters domestically, suggesting a possible shift in plans. 

Iranian officials announced on several occasions during the past few years that Russia would sell several Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets to Iran, but such claims never yielded any results. 

Ashtiani, who sounded reluctant to provide any details, said: "At some point, we made a deal for the purchase, but we came to the conclusion that we have the ability to produce (fighter jets) in the country." However, he also mentioned that the authorities are "investigating the situation" and could reconsider the purchase if deemed necessary.

In 2018, Iran said it had started production of the locally designed Kowsar fighter for use in its air force. Some military experts believe the jet is a carbon copy of an F-5 first produced in the United States in the 1960s. 

Different scenarios have been speculated as to the reason behind the collapse of the deal with Russia. There are speculations that Israel may have influenced Russia's decision to withhold the advanced fighters from Iran. The American government has also expressed concerns about the extensive military cooperation between Russia and Iran, considering it potentially harmful to regional stability.

A more plausible explanation was given by aviation expert and author Babak Taghvaee, who said the obstacle is Russia's refusal to transfer crucial technology for producing Su-35 parts in Iran and providing knowledge for domestic maintenance for the next 30 years.

He cited Commander of the Iranian Army’s Air Force Brigadier General Hamid Vahedi as telling his sources that "for now, the General Staff of the Armed Forces has opposed procurement of Su-35SE multirole fighter jets from Russia as Russian government refuses to transfer technology for production of their parts in Iran as well as to provide the knowledge for maintaining the aircraft domestically for the next 30 years." 

Taghvaee added that Russians want to sell only 25 Su-35Es previously ordered by Egypt without proper maintenance, weapons, spare part support and simulators. 

“On the basis of the lessons learned from the sale and delivery of Su-30SM fighter jets to Armenia and the insidious decision of the Russian government for not allowing Armenians to operate them against Azerbaijan during the recent Karabakh war, it is highly possible that the untrustworthy Russians do the same to the Iranian air force in case of their intention for using Su-35SEs in war," he added. 

In September, Vahedi said that buying Su-35s is on the agenda of the Air Force but the country has no plans to buy Sukhoi Su-30s, both developed from Sukhoi Su-27 which was a Soviet-origin twin-engine supermaneuverable fighter aircraft. Su-35 is single-seat but Su-30 is a two-seat, multi-role fighter. According to reports, the Army’s Air Force needs at least 64 aircraft, 24 of which will come from Egypt's order which remained undelivered due to US pressure on Cairo.

Iran has also expressed interest in obtaining other advanced military tech from its partner in crime such as air-defense system S-400, a mobile, surface-to-air missile system. Iran has supplied hundreds of kamikaze drones to Russia that have been used to target Ukraine's military and civilian infrastructure. Moscow denies that its forces use Iranian-built drones in Ukraine, although many have been shot down and recovered there. 

Iran’s air force has only a few dozen strike aircraft: Russian jets as well as ageing US models acquired before the Iranian revolution of 1979. Instead, Iran has developed a variety of drones and missiles seen as a threat for other regional countries, especially Israel.

Earlier this week, the Israeli army successfully dropped bunker-busting bombs intended for the destruction of special trenches from its F-35 fighters, the Israeli Channel 14 reported, highlighting it as a clear message to Iran. Israel is the second country in the world after the US to test this capability, according to the report. 

The news was released this week in the latest recent report by Dadgostar, the news agency of US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA).

Over the past decade, Iran has witnessed an alarming rate of executions with at least 4,800 individuals put to death by the Islamic Republic. The report highlights the concerning trend of an average of 10 citizens being executed every week since May of the current year alone.

Of the executed individuals, 2,196 faced drug-related charges, raising serious concerns about the use of capital punishment for offenses that do not qualify as the "most serious crimes."

Disturbingly, the report also reveals that 41 "child-criminals" were among those executed, with at least one of them being charged with drug-related offenses.

Human rights organizations have also expressed deep concern over the imminent execution of six Arab prisoners, further emphasizing the need for urgent international attention on Iran's approach to capital punishment.

HRANA, in its report, underscored that Iran, as a member of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is bound by the principle that the death penalty should only be applied to the "most serious crimes." Any deviation from this principle is considered a violation of the right to life, as stated by international law.

The announcement comes amidst concerns over potential difficulties in the development of this agreement due to protests from the Iranian side in response to a joint statement following the Russia-GCC Strategic Dialogue ministerial meeting.

The disagreement centers around one specific point in the joint statement, which Iranian officials believe reflects solidarity with the UAE's stance on the territorial dispute concerning three islands in the Persian Gulf, territories that Tehran considers its own. The Iranian side expressed dissatisfaction with the explanations provided by Moscow.

However, despite the challenges, Zakharova on Thursday asserted that the process of drafting the new interstate treaty between Iran and Russia is ongoing.

Zakharova further noted that in a recent telephone conversation on July 18, the Foreign Ministers of Russia and Iran discussed the outcomes of the Russia-GCC Strategic Dialogue meeting.

“During the call, they reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the fundamental principles of international law enshrined in the UN Charter, with a particular emphasis on respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she said.

Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Russia's ambassador and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and government spokesman Ali Bahadori wrote in separate tweets that "Iran will not compromise over its national interests and territorial integrity."

However, Tehran’s official reaction to one of its most powerful allies has been meek as the regime navigates through the crisis.