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TOP STORIES
Iran has resumed talks with Russia to build a new
nuclear power plant capable of generating up to 3,000 megawatts of
electricity, energy minister Reza Ardakanian said Saturday, according
to the Tasnim news agency.
Iran's parliament voted Sunday to fire the country's
finance minister amid an economic free fall fanned by America's
withdrawal from the nuclear deal with world powers, dealing another
blow to President Hassan Rouhani's embattled administration.
Iran has full control of the Gulf and the U.S. Navy does
not belong there, the head of the navy of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, General Alireza Tangsiri, was quoted by Tasnim news agency as
saying on Monday.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
Iran [is] awaiting European guarantees on the sale of
Iranian oil and banking relations, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif said on Saturday, according to the Iranian Students' News
Agency (ISNA).
Iranian lawyers will ask the International Court of
Justice on Monday to order the United States to lift sanctions
ordered by the Trump administration against Tehran.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said some members of
oil producer group OPEC were acting in accordance with U.S. policies,
Iran's Khaneye Mellat news agency reported on Friday.
The European Union's decision to transfer millions of
dollars in aid to Iran is a symbolic move intended to undermine the United
States' strategy of pressuring Tehran into re-negotiating the nuclear
deal, analysts said.
Non-oil exports from Iran's South Pars, the world's
largest gas field, rose 23 percent over the past year, its head of
customs said on Saturday, according to an Iranian agency.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
A detained British-Iranian aid worker sentenced to five
years in jail in Iran was returned to prison on Sunday after a
request to extend her three-day temporary release was rejected, her
husband said. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the
Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran
airport as she was heading back to Britain with her two-year-old daughter
after a family visit.
Jailed Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh began
a hunger strike in prison on Saturday, she announced in a note posted
on her husband's Facebook page.
Iranian Christians are in dire straits in the Islamic
Republic because of a new wave of regime repression that has largely
not registered in the media due to the country's economic free fall
and popular uprising by a people fed up with the tyrannical nature of
the regime.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said
Sunday that the U.S. is waging a "psychological war"
against his nation and its trading partners.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran's Defense Ministry has shut down more than 130 of
its companies that were active in the economic sector and sold its
shares in other corporations.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Iran has full control of the Gulf and the Strait of
Hormuz, the head of the Revolutionary Guards navy, General Alireza
Tangsiri, said Monday, according to the Tasnim news agency.
NORTH KOREA & IRAN
North Korea's state-controlled newspaper on Sunday
accused the United States of "double-dealing" and
"hatching a criminal plot" against Pyongyang, after
Washington abruptly canceled a visit by Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The Yemeni government filed a complaint to the United
Nations Security Council against the Iran-backed Lebanese
"Hezbollah" party over its meddling in its internal
affairs, reported Al-Arabiya.net. It said that the Iran-backed Houthi
militias were being ordered by "Hezbollah" to hinder the
UN-sponsored Geneva talks set for September 6.
Yemen's Houthi group fired two Zelzal-1 missiles in the
direction of Saudi Arabian provinces alongside the joint border, the
Houthis' Masirah TV said in a tweet on Sunday. The two missiles
targeted "gatherings of Saudi soldiers," one in Jizan and
the other in Najran, it said.
Iran's defense minister said Sunday his country will
continue its support of the Syrian government to ensure improved
security in the region, adding that the nature of the two countries'
cooperation won't be decided by a "third party."
Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami arrived in Syria on
Sunday for meetings with President Bashar al-Assad and senior defence
and military officials as part of a two-day visit, according to the
Tasnim news agency.
Iran and Syria agreed to expand defense and military
cooperation, seemingly pushing back against US and Russian attempts
to force Iranian troops out of the country, Iranian and Syrian
state-run media reported Sunday.
Russia would essentially have to fight Iran to get it
out of Syria, where Tehran aims to continue the 30-year alliance and
benefit from the reconstruction after the civil war, experts
say.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the Islamic
Republic always seeks to strengthen relations with Qatar as a
friendly country in the sensitive Middle East region. "There are
numerous capacities and grounds for the expansion of cooperation
between Iran and Qatar in political and economic fields and there is
no obstacle in the way of improving joint cooperation," Rouhani
said in a telephone conversation with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani on Sunday.
CYBERWARFARE
Hackers linked with the Iranian government are targeting
universities and academic institutions around the world as part of a
major campaign to steal unpublished research and obtain intellectual
property, security researchers have revealed.
Facebook on Tuesday dismantled an expansive, covert
Iranian influence operation aimed at American, British, Latin
American, and Middle Eastern audiences... The exposure of this
multi-year cyber campaign should dispel the myth that Tehran put a
tight leash on its hackers during and after negotiating the nuclear
deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
More than a year before Facebook and Twitter announced
that they had discovered a new foreign influence campaign tied to
Iranian state media, a group of volunteer moderators on Reddit
noticed a peculiar pattern of submissions.
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