China Calls On Iran To Protect Red Sea Shipping

“We had three meetings with the management of the Gandhi Hospital before the incident and issued the necessary warnings regarding the safety of the building”, said Mehdi Khosravani, crisis manager of the 6th district of Tehran municipality, where the hospital is located.

According to the official, the Gandhi Hospital was required to have a consultant on how to implement the most advanced firefighting and fire alarm systems in order to maintain safety in the building.

“In general, we have warned about 40 large public and private hospitals in this district over their unsafe conditions”, he stressed.

Motahar Mohammadkhani, the spokesperson for Tehran municipality, also blamed the hospital’s management for the blaze. “This would not have happened if the hospital administrators had heeded earlier warnings. The judicial system should step in,” he stated.

Meanwhile, Hossein Nazari, deputy of urban services of Tehran municipality, said images broadcast made the fire look larger than the reality due to the composite façade of the building. “The fire was an ordinary one,” he claimed, downplaying the scale of the incident.

State TV said the area was cordoned off and the hospital evacuated.

Pedram Pak-Ayin, the spokesperson for Iran’s Health Ministry, said that “none” of the staff and patients at the Gandhi Hospital were harmed but said patients were transferred to other medical centers.

The exact cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

“If a security message was passed on by the US, it was intended to protect Washington from Iran’s response, especially after the Israeli war in Gaza,” IRNA quoted an Iranian security official as saying.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the US had warned the Islamic Republic of the impending bombings which claimed the lives of 95 people in Kerman earlier this month.

In spite of the warning that Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, planned to commit the attacks at the commemoration ceremony of slain Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Iran failed to prevent the deadly bombings, the report added.

Separately, Iran International has learned that the US passed the warning to Iran more than one week before the attack.

Speaking to Iran International, a US official said, “Prior to ISIS’ terrorist attack on January 3, 2024, in Kerman, Iran, the US Government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders.

“The US Government followed a longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy that has been implemented across administrations to warn governments against potential lethal threats. We provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”

The attack was the deadliest since the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Many Iranians questioned why Soleimani’s family members and top officials were absent from the memorial at his gravesite in Kerman, raising the validity of the US warning as to their absence.

Rahemipour is one of the four political prisoners in the women’s ward of Evin who are over 70 years old. She was imprisoned in November to serve a five-year prison sentence, despite suffering from a brain tumor and other ailments.

Tehran’s Revolutionary Court headed by notorious Judge Abolqasem Salavati sentenced Rahemipour to six years in prison over such allegations as “propaganda against the government” and attempts to “disrupt national security.”

Her brother, Hossein Rahemipour, was also a political prisoner who was executed in 1984. His child, born in Evin prison, was never handed over to his family after his execution.

A group of 61 women political prisoners went on a hunger strike in the women’s ward of Evin on Thursday to protest the Islamic Republic’s ruthless execution spree, including the execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou.

In a statement published Thursday, secretary of defense Lloyd Austin confirmed that the US-Iraqi Higher Military Commission (HMC) will convene meetings in the “coming days” to discuss new ways of cooperation in the post-ISIS era.

The statement has been widely read as the beginning of the end of US military presence in Iraq, despite the Pentagon’s categorical rejection of that reading.

“Let me be clear, the HMC meeting is not a negotiation about the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq,” Pentagon’s deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a briefing Thursday. “The United States and the coalition are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government to fight ISIS. The HMC will enable the transition to an enduring bilateral security partnership between the US and Iraq.”

The timing of the announcement has led many to believe it is related to the regional crisis following the Hamas’ attack on Israel and the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Since last October, American bases in Iraq and Syria have been targeted more than 150 times by Iran-backed groups, and Tehran has repeated its threats that the 'Resistance Front' will evict the US from the region. Shiite groups in Iraq supported by Iran have also intensified their calls for all foreign forces to leave the country.

It is hard to tell if that demand has forced the Pentagon announcement – or if it would be on the agenda during the coming HMC talks.

Austin’s statement lacks clarity and detail, which leaves it open to interpretation. It speaks of “transition”, “process”, “timeline”, and “evolving” relationship, all of which can point to a strategic shift from direct military presence to security cooperation. But any shift, according to the statement, would be contingent on “ISIS threat”, “operational requirements”, and the “capability” of Iraqi forces, which can always be used to justify continuous US military presence in Iraq.

The Iraqi party, however, seems to be clearer about its negotiation objectives.

The aim, according to a statement from Iraq’s foreign ministry, is to come up with a “clear timeline determining the duration of the presence of the international coalition advisors in Iraq, initiating a gradual and thoughtful reduction of their presence on Iraqi soil, concluding the military mission against [ISIS], and transitioning to comprehensive bilateral relations with coalition countries.”

The Iraqi parliament has voted to oust American forces from Iraq. But the Biden administration says it is yet to be asked to do so formally.

Any negotiation between the Iraqis and the Americans will be closely watched from Tehran – and by Assad and the Kurdish forces in the area. A full withdrawal, if it ever happens, would likely put the Iranian regime in a much stronger position than it already is in Iraq and Syria.

Earlier in the week, it was reported that the Biden administration may be considering a full withdrawal of American troops from Syria in 2024. That report was also swiftly rejected by the Pentagon as “erroneous.”

There are about 2,500 American troops in Iraq and about 900 in Syria. The numbers are small when compared to the numbers in the early years after the Bush-led invasion of Iraq. At its peak, there were almost 170,000 US forces on the ground in Iraq.

The two are the latest victims of the government's crackdown on dissent following a record year in 2023 seeing 834 executions according to the United Nations, eight linked to the nationwide protests which began in 2022.

Ahmadi, originally sentenced in September by the Revolutionary Court of Sanandaj on charges of "corruption," saw his appeal denied, while Abidavi, along with his brother Hossein, received their verdict from the Revolutionary Court of Mahshahr.

Ahmadi, along with co-defendants Mohammad Karimi, Baset Karimi, and Mohammad Feizi, were arrested in May 2020 in Baneh, Kordestan province, under accusations of collaborating with an opposition party. Reports indicate they were subjected to severe torture to extract confessions, which led to Ahmadi's death sentence and varying prison terms for the others.

Simultaneously, Ali and Hossein Abidavi faced the judiciary in Mahshahr, accused of attacking a Basij base four years ago. Ali Abidavi received the death penalty, while his brother was sentenced to 13 years behind bars.

This week, the UN's experts slammed the execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou, a 23-year-old protester with a long-term psychosocial disability.