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#Iranian assets frozen
timesofocean · 2 years
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Iran's frozen foreign assets to be released: FM
New Post has been published on https://www.timesofocean.com/irans-frozen-foreign-assets-to-be-released-fm/
Iran's frozen foreign assets to be released: FM
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Tehran (Times Of Ocean)- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh announced on Monday that the Iranian assets frozen abroad will be released “soon” as reported by Iranian media.
Saeed Khatibzadeh confirmed reports that $7 billion in Iranian assets have been frozen in foreign banks due to U.S. sanctions.
During an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, Khatibzadeh said that a framework had been put in place for the unlocking of Iranian assets.
Al Jazeera news channel cited an anonymous Iranian official as saying that the assets would soon be released and deposited at a bank in Oman, where they would be transferred to Iran in due course.
Iran prisoner swap to release more dual nationals
A number of countries have frozen billions of dollars in Iranian assets as a result of US sanctions” Reports
IRNA reported last week that agreements had been reached with a few countries regarding the unfreezing of frozen Iranian assets abroad.
Due to US sanctions, huge amounts of assets belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran are frozen outside the country. Iran has repeatedly objected to the freezing of its assets and described the bans as oppressive and part of an economic war.
On Tuesday, a regional official identified as “possibly Oman’s foreign minister” will travel to Tehran to finalize a mechanism to release frozen Iranian assets worth seven billion dollars, IRGC-run Tasnim News Agency reported earlier.
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hero-israel · 3 months
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Hi there! Could you please expand on the Qatari funds at US banks? I saw someone claim US had indirectly funded the terrorist regime that sponsored the 10/7 program — supposedly, the 6B that the US authorized into Iran because of the ransom transfer deal had not been reimbursed by that time and were strictly for humanitarian purposes, coincidentally said to “frozen at Qatar’s central bank” (I don’t know if this claim is legitimate, but that was reported by US officials), yet there’s also the claim that the fungibility of the money (knowing they had money coming) could have emboldened Iran into funding Hamas? How does this relate to the Qatari funds at US banks, and is there other ways the US (even if not Biden specifically*) has indirectly funded Hamas/Iran (aside from UNRWA, for instance, or US aid to Palestine —which I’m not sure if it belongs to a separate category)?
They don't relate, they are entirely separate issues. My suggestion was to freeze all Qatari assets currently involved with the U.S. banking system - no liquidity, no withdrawals - as we did with Japan in 1941. It would have gashed their economy, shocked and humiliated them, and almost certainly would have helped us get Ismail Haniyeh on a rope by Thanksgiving. (And no, Qatar is not 1940s Imperial Japan, it does not project military power - but if they felt like fucking around, sure, we'd let them find out.)
The Iranian funds released to Qatar were supposedly "frozen," I'd like to believe that is the case, but a lot of - I'm sorry to say this - Democrat State Department types are just hell-bent on rehabilitating and normalizing Iran. We saw this with Obama's deal mechanism, with Ben Rhodes hologramming newly-invented foreign policy groups into public discussions to sway opinion, with the overbearing notion that as long as you give Iran lots of money and good seats at the Davos Forum they won't be imperialist fundie assholes anymore. The same people who were sure they'd be able to control Iran were totally blindsided by Brexit and by Trump winning. Their words on paper were totally going to constrain the IRGC, but then Pennsylvania Republicans did something shocking and unfair that they couldn't deal with.
Highly educated Western atheists just do not comprehend violent religious fundamentalism and how it can give its practitioners wholly different priorities. To borrow a phrase, Iran really DOESN'T want to cure cancer, they want to turn people into dinosaurs.
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saywhat-politics · 6 months
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DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Five prisoners sought by the U.S. in a swap with Iran flew out of Tehran on Monday, officials said, part of a deal that saw nearly $6 billion in Iranian assets unfrozen.
Despite the deal, tensions are almost certain to remain high between the U.S. and Iran, which are locked in various disputes, including over Tehran’s nuclear program. Iran says the program is peaceful, but it now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
Flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed a Qatar Airways flight take off from Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport, which has been used for exchanges in the past. Iranian state media soon after said the flight had left Tehran.
Two people, including a senior Biden administration official, said that the prisoners had left Tehran. They both spoke on condition of anonymity because the exchange was ongoing.
In addition to the five freed Americans, two U.S. family members flew out of Tehran, according to the Biden administration official. The flight was expected to land in Doha, Qatar.
Earlier, officials said that the exchange would take place after nearly $6 billion in once-frozen Iranian assets reached Qatar, a key element of the deal.
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gwydionmisha · 6 months
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In part I of this series I told you the war over the US dollar was over because the bane of domestic monetary policy, Eurodollar futures, lost the battle with SOFR, the new standard for pricing dollars.
The ignominious end of the Eurodollar system is a study in the evolution of markets, as a new system replaces an old one. Old systems don’t die overnight. We don’t flip a switch and wake up in a new reality, unless we are protagonists in a Philip K. Dick novel.
More than a decade ago I looked at the responses to President Obama cutting Iran out of the SWIFT system as the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system. The goal was to take Iran out of the global oil markets by shutting Iran out from the dominant dollar payment system.
Out of necessity Iran opened up trade with its major export partners, most notably India, in something other than dollars. India and Iran started up a ‘goods for oil’ trade, or as Bloomberg called it at the time, “Junk for Oil.”
The stick of sanctions created a new market for pricing Iranian oil and a way around the monopoly of US dollar oil trading. India, struggling with massive current account deficits because of their high energy import bill, welcomed the trade as a way to lessen the pressure on the rupee.
Iran needed goods. They worked out some barter trade and the first shallow cuts into the petrodollar system were made.
Turkey eventually joined the fray, seeing the opportunity to act as a middle man by accepting gold into its banks from Iran’s customers and settling up with Iran in dollars or whatever.
Turkey was the first country to make gold a 100% reserve asset in defiance of Basel I capital rules to facilitate this trade. Turkey’s gold ‘reserves’ skyrocketed because of this.
More than 10 years later we’re now looking at the lynchpin of the petrodollar, Saudi Arabia, seriously considering taking other currencies for their oil. The petrodollar was never going to die overnight, it was always going to die as the cost of doing business in dollars rose to make using other currencies a better path to buying/selling oil.
Every time the US went to the sanctions well to coerce conformity, the more “star systems slipped through its fingers,” to quote Princess Leia. While we joke today about never ‘going full retard,’ this is just another way of saying that you should never threaten to nuke someone either.
Trump went sanctions nuclear on Iran in 2018. He failed.
“Biden” and Davos went nuclear on Russia in 2022, going further than even Trump. And they failed even harder. All they did was raise the cost of using dollars in the minds of the dollar’s best customers.
When the cost/benefit framework flips, behavior changes accordingly.
In the world of money, since we don’t have anything close to resembling real capital markets, rather politicized ones, policy is the thing that alters that cost/benefit structure the most. This means while analyzing the market reaction to day-to-day data the listening to the tea-leaf reading by commentators becomes an exercise in chasing your tail through a wilderness of rhetorical mirrors if you don’t include policy changes.
So, with that in mind we have to analyze structural changes to markets from a policy perspective to see what the future really looks like. It’s not that the markets don’t have a say in the matter, it’s that if you analyze the policy through the lens of capital flowing to where it is treated best, then the future outcome is pretty predictable if there isn’t a competing policy put in place to redirect that capital flow later.
In this sense, financial analysis in politicized markets is better described by court politics than spreadsheet output cells.
People want oil. They will buy it regardless of what Davos or “Biden” or anyone else says about this. Until you replace oil itself, no amount of policy changes will fundamentally change the market for oil unless you destroy the supply chain supporting the oil industry.
And analyzing oil supply and demand fundamentals in this case is a fool’s errand when malign actors are materially affecting the supply and demand for oil and are incentivized to ‘game the statistics.’ It’s not that these numbers are worthless, it’s more that they should be discounted heavily until policy changes are assessed.
Diminishing Returns of Socialism
In the end all markets respond predictably to the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. If you don’t believe that, then you are a Malthusian and publicly admitting you are a moron with the inability to accept outcomes you cannot personally perceive.
I put the “Peak Oil” folks in this category. And you know who you are.
I put Climate Change believers in this category as well. Yes, by the transitive property of rhetorical mathematics, I just called them all morons.
The Davos solution to their problems of overpromising the deliverables of socialism financed through the dollar is to default on those promises through global monetary inflation using war with Russia and China as the cover and Climate Change as the reason why it’s necessary.
This is to save themselves and secure totalitarian control for their posterity into the next cycle of history.
But history will prove them wrong. Because, in the end, you can’t fight a flowing river any more than you can alter the mass of human behavior with respect to their preferences. If they want to drive a car, eat a steak, live in a house, own a gun or have a child, they will.
You can delay it or make it more expensive but that expense is a double-edged sword, because as Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” (OPM)
Think of the Eurodollar system as the ultimate expression of OPM, which is a homophone for ‘hopium.’
If you really want to change their behavior, you have to give them more carrot than stick. This appraoch worked for decades to guide us towards their more perfect technocratic dystopian unions as long as money got progressively cheaper during the dollar reserve standard.
This system broke in 2008 and by 2011 forced the world, through a compliant Federal Reserve, into birthing the Coordinated Central Bank Standard, where all the major central banks would take turns inflating a deflating credit system.
But back to Diminishing Marginal Utility. The law simply states that the acquisition of the next unit of a thing, any thing (water, money, food, credit dollars, etc.), is worth less to a person than the previous unit. We act to alleviate our perceived need to hedge against future uncertainty. So, in hurricane season, we Floridians stock up on bottled water, propane, toilet paper, preserved food, etc.
Price is supposed to tell us when to stop stocking up and really assess what’s important to us. I’ll leave my rant about ‘anti-gouging’ laws on the cutting room floor.
It is this verity about human action in the face of both scarcity and abundance that creates the Newtonian ‘opposite reaction’ to rising/falling costs.
It is what always squashes the fears of Malthusian thinking against the windshield of history.
So, while you can bully people into acting against their preferred outcomes for a while by raising the costs of disobedience to be greater than the marginal return of defiance, eventually a reversal of that cost/benefit framework takes place.
For the Fed and the domestic banking interests, the best way to get to their preferred end, a domestically-driven cost structure to the US dollar, it meant offering the market gradually a better alternative to the old system or Eurodollars.
SOFR is a collateralized rate, delivered to the market by the market for dollars. It’s a fundamentally superior interest rate product than LIBOR, which is a number picked out of thin air by 18 banks of dubious character and even more dubious motivations.
Eurodollar futures are set based on LIBOR and because of LIBOR being written previously into every old debt and debt derivative instrument out there, LIBOR was the tail wagging the monetary policy dog.
The five-year roll out of SOFR was done to introduce the better system and phase it in allowing the market to come to the ‘right’ conclusion that it is superior. If SOFR wasn’t a superior product to LIBOR no matter how much the Fed tried to force it onto the market, the market would have rejected it.
Eurodollar futures would have remained a vibrant and liquid market up to the last day and call the Fed’s bluff.
But SOFR was a superior product, gradually weaning the markets off LIBOR. Now there is still a whole lotta LIBOR-indexed debt out there and a lot of people are holding out hope this is all just a bad dream, but it’s not.
Caught between the Scylla (a 25 bps spread over LIBOR) and Charybdis of prime, 3.50% over that, the outcome is inevitable. Anyone holding out is likely hoping for a last-minute policy change to help them out. If I had to guess those holdouts are at Blackrock trying to blackmail the Fed like they blackmailed the Bank of England last summer over UK pension obligations.
I don’t know that the situation is analogous but it certainly smells that way.
The BRICS and the Golden Path
I had Vince Lanci on the podcast recently to discuss this very thing, how to replace an old system with a new one gradually.
He’d been thinking about remonetizing gold, spurred on by a Twitter Spaces we did where we discussed gold redeemable Treasuries, or as Vince put it, “throw gold out onto the yield curve.” Listen to the podcast as we go over this idea in detail.
Like the fall of the petro- and euro- dollar, the re-monetization of gold cannot happen overnight. Instead something like that has to happen over time. Again, using more carrot than stick is the better, more sustainable path.
The markets are screaming for a solution to the current mess — wanting less debt, even less leveraged debt, fewer wars, more decentralization — but everyone also doesn’t want to be reduced to Bartertown and all that that implies.
So, the best way to achieve that is to signal to the market that this exactly what you want. It starts with policy. In the case of the Fed it starts with being wholly unapologetic of the political consequences of aggressively tight monetary policy.
FOMC Chair Jay “Baller” Powell gave us that this week testifying before the Senate Banking Committee.
Powell reiterated his ‘higher rates for longer’ mantra. But, unlike in the past, the markets are now actually listening to him. There are still holdouts, trying to undermine the Fed, but I’ll leave the ECB and BoJ out of the discussion for now. The bond markets are grudgingly accepting this but the yield curve on US Treasury debt is still stubbornly inverted.
But more significantly, Powell told Sen. Cynthia Lummis the Fed flat-out does not consider the fiscal situation on Capitol Hill in making monetary policy. (H/T Jim Bianco).
Read that passage carefully and you’ll see this FOMC Chair isn’t above telling Congress their business. You may not believe Powell but we know there are ways of getting out of this fiscal and monetary mess if we commit to doing it, rather than pouring gasoline on the socialist fire that the “Biden” Administration just did with their budget proposal.
Moreover, what’s unspoken by Powell and others in the position to support him is what’s lurking on the other side of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a growing international framework for trade wholly outside the control or threats of the western political establishment and their slap-happy sanction monkeys we call heads of state.
Powell can see the de-dollarization writing on the wall and he knows now is the time to slow down that trend and find a way to make the dollar more trustworthy. But, again, he can only deal with one side of that equation — the monetary policy side. The Fiscal and regulatory side are still firmly controlled by, frankly, shitbag commies; old, terrified colonial interests in Europe and the northeast US who see their time passing and refuse to accept it with grace.
People who would rather burn the world to the ground than let it fall into the hands of those they consider ‘the help.’
But ‘the help’ are no longer helpless in the face of a big bully US dollar. They have a plan and they are executing it. That plan clearly involves the return of gold as the asset to balance the trade books to rebuild global trust and if the US and Europe don’t stop acting like entitled, spoiled children on the world stage, they will drop the gradualism and one day we will wake up in a different reality.
This was Powell’s real message to Congress this week. It is the clear geopolitical imperative staring us all in the face. But if we don’t start down it now voluntarily, the superior monetary system will eventually outcompete and capital will flow to where it is treated best.
This is the future policy choice we have to make our peace with. Because if we don’t I’m reminded of an old, bad joke I first heard as a teenager. “What’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s head before it hits the windshield of your car?”
“It’s ass.”
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the government of Iran is committed to murdering. killing toddlers and small school children. shooting 2 year olds and arresting and imprisoning 3 year olds. raping every young personne and adulte They can get Their hands on.
what stands between Them and brutal victory - is the people of Iran and You and i!
get loud!
be a thorn in Their side!
1. demand the membres of the Iranian gouvernement and family membres of the brutal regime NOT BE ALLOWED SAFE PASSAGE OR RESIDENCY ANYWHERE. THAT THEY ARE DEPORTED BACK TO IRAN.
2. that ALL gouvernements stop doing business with the brutal murderous Islamic regime.
3. that all assets of the brutal Iranian regime are FROZEN OR TAKEN.
4. PLEASE CONTACT ANY POLITICAL PERSONNE YOU CAN THINK OF. STATE, CITY, PROVINCE, DEPARTMENT, FEDERAL, NATIONAL- ANY AND ALL!!!
(lettres, telephone, internet. petitions!)
THANK YOU AND MUCH MUCH MUCH LOVE FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!
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yhwhrulz · 14 days
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jesuspilled · 1 month
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The Washington foreign policy establishment is on the precipice of making yet another strategic blunder.
The Senate is poised to ram through the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act. This legislation will provide the president the authority to confiscate Russia’s frozen sovereign assets in the United States and transfer them to Ukraine for its reconstruction.
Confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets is an act of economic war. Seizing and transferring these assets to Ukraine may make Washington feel virtuous, but it will not bring peace. Passage of this bill will only reinforce the view of hardliners in Moscow that Russia’s war lies not just with Ukraine, but really with the United States and the West. Any hope that the United States and Russia could work toward stabilizing or improving relations will subsequently be destroyed.
There is no justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but enacting this bill will make peace less likely. Ukrainians have courageously defended their country for nearly two years, but even Ukraine’s former top military commander General Valery Zaluzhny admits the war is now a stalemate.
Russia’s frozen assets could be used as a bargaining chip during negotiations, but once Congress provides the president the authority to seize Russian assets, there will be immense political pressure on him to carry out the policy to avoid looking weak. President Biden was recently pilloried by the media and members of my party for returning frozen Iranian assets in exchange for five American hostages. He is unlikely to make that decision again.
Confiscation will only convince Moscow that there is no negotiated settlement to be had with Ukraine. The result will be a destroyed Ukraine. More Ukrainian soldiers and civilians will die, and more cities and towns will be turned to rubble.
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featurenews · 5 months
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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 614
Ukraine and Russian need to negotiate an end to the conflict, says Putin ally Lukashenko; Ukrainian peace talks open in Malta without Moscow present * See all our Ukraine war coverage Russia says it has shot down 36 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula. There were claims in local media outlets that a fire at an oil refinery in the early hours of Sunday had been caused by a drone strike or debris from a downed drone. Ukraine has said it shot down five Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones launched from Russia overnight. State media in Russia has reported that more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in Yuzhno-Donetsk over the past 24 hours. The 58th motorised infantry, 79th air assault brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the 128th territorial defence brigade were reportedly involved in the attack by Russian troops. Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. Russia would confiscate assets belonging to EU states it deems unfriendly if the bloc “steals” frozen Russian funds in a drive to fund Ukraine, a top ally of Vladimir Putin said. The comments were made after Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that the EU executive was working on a proposal to pool some of the profits derived from frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine and its postwar reconstruction. Ukraine and Russia are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus president, said. Lukashenko, a key Putin ally, described the current state of the conflict as “head-to-head, to the death, entrenched … seriously stalemate.” Four Ukrainian police officers were wounded when a shell fired by Russian troops exploded by their police car in the city of Siversk, located in the partly occupied Donetsk oblast. A third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta, but without Moscow. In a statement, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said 66 countries had taken part, proof that his plan “has gradually become global”. Ukraine’s deputy minister Mykola Tochytskyi has said his country aims to hold a global “peace summit” of world leaders this year. A mob in Russia’s mostly Muslim region of Dagestan has stormed the airport in Makhachkala in search of Jewish passengers arriving from Israel, after reports emerged that a flight from Tel Aviv was arriving in the city. There were reports of some injuries at the airport, while some passengers were forced to take refuge in planes or hide in the airport for fear of being attacked. About 2,000 Ukrainians ran a 1km race on Sunday in Kyiv, wearing bibs displaying the name of a person instead of a number. Each runner chose one person to whom they dedicated their run. Spouses, children, friends, siblings, neighbours, and colleagues ran for someone they knew who either was killed, taken captive or injured during the war. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/russia-ukraine-war-at-a-glance-what-we-know-on-day-614?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr
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newsource21 · 5 months
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However, Obama spewed empty words.  Disregarding what he said about Israeli security and having its back, Obama “implemented” (he circumvented the U.S. Constitution to do so) in 2015 the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  Under it, the U.S. suspended sanctions on the sale of oil and trade, and other financial sanctions, which had crippled Iran’s economy.  In return, Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program (it did not).  The JCPOA’s critics said it was flawed because it didn’t halt all Iranian nuclear activity.  Iran also got relief from E.U. and U.N. sanctions and was granted access to frozen assets.  The JCPOA infused Iran with cash.  By lifting oil and financial sanctions on Iran, billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets, mostly revenues from oil sales, were unfrozen.  Its central bank gained control over more than $120 billion in foreign exchange reserves.  Besides, Iran never fully complied with the JCPOA and repeatedly reneged on nuclear nonproliferation obligations it agreed upon.
In what has to be two of Obama’s most severe slaps in Israel’s face, he refused in December 2016 to sign a renewal of sanctions against Iran.  Perhaps he knew that the sanctions would become law anyway, but the symbolism of what he didn’t do was unforgivable.
Then, with his 2012 election behind him, with a month to go as president, no longer needing to fool Jews or Gentiles again, despite what he had said about always having Israel’s back, Obama slipped a knife into Israel’s back.  He abstained (via his ambassador) from voting and thus allowed a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Israel over settlements to pass.  He pretended the resolution was simply a restatement of longstanding U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements.
These are only two of a string of insults Obama foisted on one of America’s closest allies.
As if Obama’s insults weren’t bad enough, the U.S. government, in 2018, traced some of the $1.7 billion Iran had gained access to, courtesy of the Obama administration, to Iranian-backed terrorists.  Iran used the cash to pay its primary proxies, the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezb’allah and the Quds Force, Iran’s main foreign intelligence and covert action arm and part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Alex Titus wrote in 2018 about Obama’s Iran policy: “America’s failed policy of appeasing the Iranian regime is over.”  It seems Titus was incorrect.  Obama’s keen iterest in achieving an understanding  with Iran wasn’t over.  The bumbling idiot who currently occupies the Bully Pulpit has seized Obama’s Iran baton.  What Joe Biden has essentially done is created Obama’s “third term,” extending Obama’s appeasement of Iran.
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summarychannel · 5 months
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Rafah crossing The West continues to bargain with Egypt to displace the people of Gaza to Sinai in exchange for canceling its debts and a response from the Egyptian army.
Updates on the Al-Aqsa Flood operation presented in this episode of Samri Channel. The beginning is from within the Israeli army, where complaints are rising among the ranks of commanders and conscripts about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s delay in issuing the order for a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, as a result of American pressure on the latter not to invade the Strip until the peaceful release of hostages held by the Hamas movement. Hamas had released two dual national hostages through Qatari mediation, which gave the White House hope of releasing the detainees without the need for a bloody operation. The West is increasingly relying on the influence of the gas-rich Gulf state, which is a major investor globally in such situations. On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron praised the "very important" role played by Doha in the release of two American hostages held by Hamas, expressing his confidence in the release of more hostages.
 “Qatar is the most accommodating mediator,” says Hosni Abidi, director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Arab World and Mediterranean Countries in Geneva. He added: “It knows Hamas well and is a loyal supporter of it,” referring to Doha’s financing of the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip, which is under the movement’s control, as it has hosted its political office for more than ten years, and at the same time enjoys the appreciation of the United States, Israel’s largest ally. . In a comment to a group of journalists, Macron said, "It is a very good result that was reached through negotiations in which Qatar played a very important role." Macron added that France wants to carry out similar operations in the coming "hours and days" to continue "allowing hostages, especially our hostages, to leave." He continued, saying: "The discussions we are holding... with various parties and with Qatar in particular, give us hope that we will be able to find solutions to extract the largest possible number of hostages." Etienne Denia, a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Sciences Po), an expert in hostage-taking situations, says that Qatar "specializes in releasing hostages."
Through Qatari mediation, six billion Iranian assets frozen in South Korean banks were released in exchange for the release of five Americans who were being held by Tehran.
An Israeli army spokesman revealed that a soldier was killed and 3 others were injured in an incident targeting Israeli forces that entered on Sunday west of the border with Gaza. Hamas announced that it had placed an Israeli armored force in a tight ambush east of Khan Yunis after crossing the fence, and forced it to withdraw. Israeli Army Radio revealed that there were casualties among the army, following the attack launched by Hamas with a missile directed against tanks from the Gaza Strip, in the vicinity of the town of Kissufim. The Israeli army confirmed that the vehicles targeted in the Kissufim area by Hamas "had crossed the fence into the Gaza Strip." Israeli Channel 12 reported that 4 soldiers were injured, one of them in critical condition, after the missile was fired.
#Egypt #Palestine #latest news
Will the Egyptian army move to respond to what happened in the Abu Salem area yesterday on the Egyptian border following the bombing of a watchtower on the Egyptian border with an Israeli tank? Why does the West still insist on displacing the people of Gaza to Sinai? Will the Israeli army turn against Netanyahu because of the ground invasion? This is what we will discuss in the “Coup” episode of the summary channel.. Watch to know the story from the beginning
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healthstyle101 · 6 months
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Yemen Airways suspends flights from rebel-held capital amid dispute over frozen funds
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Yemen's State-Owned Airline Suspends Vital Route in Protest of Houthi Restrictions Yemen Airways, the country's state-run airline, has taken a significant step by suspending the only air route out of the capital city held by rebels, in a bold protest against Houthi restrictions on its financial assets. As of the end of September, Yemen Airways was operating six flights each week between the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and the Jordanian capital, Amman. This route was reintroduced last year as part of a U.N.-brokered cease-fire between the Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized government. Although the cease-fire agreement expired in October 2022, both sides refrained from taking actions that could reignite all-out fighting. The conflict in Yemen began in 2014 when the Houthi rebels took control of Sanaa, forcing the government into exile. Subsequently, a Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 with the aim of restoring the government to power. The airline has attributed its decision to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have been withholding $80 million of the company's funds in banks under their control in Sanaa. Yemen Airways stated on Saturday that the rebels rejected a proposal to release 70% of the frozen funds. They highlighted that over 70% of their revenues are generated from sales in Sanaa. The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported an unnamed source condemning the airline's suspension of services, stating that the rebels had offered to release 60% of the airline's funds in Sanaa. The dispute between the Houthi rebels and the national airline unfolds at a time when the parties, including Saudi Arabia, have been making efforts to reach a peace agreement. The ongoing conflict in Yemen has escalated into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, resulting in widespread suffering and hunger. Yemen was already considered the Arab world's poorest nation prior to the conflict. The war has led to the deaths of more than 150,000 individuals, including both combatants and civilians, and has resulted in one of the most severe humanitarian crises globally. Recently, tensions between the Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia have appeared to be easing, with both sides engaging in peace talks that have yielded positive results. However, these diplomatic efforts were marred by a Houthi attack last week that claimed the lives of four Bahraini troops patrolling the southern border of Saudi Arabia as part of a coalition force. Additionally, the Houthi rebels barred four activists from the Mwatana for Human Rights group from boarding a flight at Sanaa airport on Saturday, without providing a clear legal justification for their actions. The group reported that Houthi officials interrogated its chairperson, Radhya al-Mutawakel, her deputy, and three other members before informing them of their travel restrictions, citing "higher orders." At the time of this report, no comment was available from a Houthi spokesperson. Mwatana for Human Rights labeled this incident as just one example of a series of violations by the Houthi rebels at Sanaa airport and along land routes connecting rebel-held territories with other regions of Yemen. Furthermore, last month, the rebels detained numerous individuals who took to the streets to commemorate Yemen's September 26 revolution, which marked the establishment of Yemen's republic in 1962. Amnesty International called these actions "outrageous" and demanded the immediate release of those detained. Read the full article
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andrewtheprophet · 6 months
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The US-Iran deal: prisoner swap or new Obama nuclear deal? Daniel 8
Photo Credit: The Cradle The US-Iran deal: prisoner swap or new nuclear agreement? The successful prisoner swap and the release of frozen Iranian assets, suggests a complex diplomatic maneuver by the Biden administration that may serve to ease tensions, potentially pave the way for broader agreements, not least a revival of the nuclear deal. Robert InlakeshSEP 20, 2023 The secret US-Iran deal…
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beatjackkerouac · 6 months
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shahananasrin-blog · 6 months
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[ad_1] By JON GAMBRELL, LUJAIN JO and MATTHEW LEE (Associated Press) DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Five Americans detained for years in Iran walked off a plane and into freedom Monday, many arm-in-arm, as part of a politically risky deal that saw President Joe Biden agree to the release of nearly $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets owed by a third country, South Korea. The successful negotiations for the Americans’ freedom brought Biden profuse thanks from their families but heat from Republican presidential rivals and other opponents for the monetary arrangement with one of America’s top rivals. “Today, five innocent Americans who were imprisoned in Iran are finally coming home,” Biden said in a statement released as the plane carrying the group from Tehran landed in Doha, Qatar. A plane carrying the Americans home to the United States was due to land Monday night. Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, on hand for the United Nations General Assembly in New York, suggested Monday’s exchange could be “a step in the direction of a humanitarian action between us and America.” “It can definitely help in building trust,” Raisi told journalists. However, tensions are almost certain to remain high between the U.S. and Iran, which are locked in disputes over Tehran’s nuclear program and other matters. Iran says the program is peaceful, but it now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. The prisoner release unfolded amid a major American military buildup in the Persian Gulf, with the possibility of U.S. troops boarding and guarding commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of all oil shipments pass. After the plane slowed to a stop in Doha, three of the prisoners walked down the stairs. They hugged the U.S. ambassador to Qatar, Timmy Davis, and others. The three — Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz — then threw their arms over one another’s shoulders and walked off to a building in the airport. In a statement issued on his behalf, Namazi said: “I would not be free today, if it wasn’t for all of you who didn’t allow the world to forget me.” “Thank you for being my voice when I could not speak for myself and for making sure I was heard when I mustered the strength to scream from behind the impenetrable walls of Evin Prison,” Namazi said. The United States did not immediately identify the other two freed American citizens, all of whom were released in exchange for five Iranians in U.S. custody and for the deal over the frozen Iranian assets. The Biden administration said the five freed Iranians posed no threat to U.S. national security. In addition to the five prisoners, two of the imprisoned Americans’ family members, Effie Namazi and Vida Tahbaz, who had been held under travel bans in Iran, also were on the plane. The women, too, clasped arms and kissed on the tarmac in Qatar. Earlier, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the exchange would take place after nearly $6 billion in once-frozen Iranian assets reached Qatar. “Fortunately Iran’s frozen assets in South Korea were released and God willing today the assets will start to be fully controlled by the government and the nation,” Kanaani said. He said two of the Iranian prisoners will stay in the U.S. Meanwhile, Nour News, a website believed to be close to Iran’s security apparatus, said two of the Iranian prisoners were in Doha for the swap. The cash represents money South Korea owed Iran — but had not yet paid — for oil purchased before the U.S. imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019. The U.S. maintains that, once in Qatar, the money will be held in restricted accounts to be used only for humanitarian goods, such as medicine and food. Those transactions are currently allowed under American sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic over its advancing nuclear program. Iranian government officials have largely concurred, though some hard-liners have insisted, without evidence, that there would be no restrictions on how Tehran spends the money. Mohammad Reza Farzin, Iran’s Central Bank chief, later came on state television to acknowledge the receipt of over 5.5 billion euros — $5.9 billion — in accounts in Qatar. Months ago, Iran had anticipated getting as much as $7 billion. The planned exchange comes ahead of the convening of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly this week in New York, where Raisi will speak. The deal has already opened Biden to fresh criticism from Republicans and others who say the administration is helping boost the Iranian economy at a time when Iran poses a growing threat to American troops and Mideast allies. That could have implications in his re-election campaign. Former President Donald Trump, currently the lead Republican challenger in the polls against Biden’s 2024 re-election bid, called it an “absolutely ridiculous” deal on the Truth Social social media site. Biden held what the White House described as an emotional call with the families of the freed Americans after their release. In his statement, Biden urged Americans not to travel to Iran and demanded more information on what happened to Bob Levinson, an American who went missing years ago. Biden also announced sanctions on former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. The prisoners freed Monday were: Namazi, who was detained in 2015 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison on spying charges; Emad Sharghi, a venture capitalist sentenced to 10 years; and Morad Tahbaz, a British-American conservationist of Iranian descent who was arrested in 2018 and also received a 10-year sentence. The U.S. government, the prisoners’ families and activists have denounced the charges against the five Americans as baseless. In a statement, Sharghi’s sister, Neda, said she “can’t wait to hug my brother and never let him go.” “This is my brother, not an abstract policy,” she added. “We are talking about human lives. There is nothing partisan about saving the lives of innocent Americans and today should be a moment of American unity as we welcome them home.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked the Qataris, Swiss, South Koreans and Omanis for helping in the exchange, and pledged in a statement to keep pressing for “accountability for Iran and other regimes for the cruel practice of wrongful detention.” The five prisoners Iran has said it seeks are mostly held over allegedly trying to export banned material to Iran, such as dual use electronics that can be used by a military. The two that Nour News said were in Doha were: Mehrdad Ansari, an Iranian sentenced to 63 months in prison in 2021 for obtaining equipment that could be used in missiles, electronic warfare, nuclear weapons and other military gear, and Reza Sarhangpour Kafrani, an Iranian charged in 2021 over allegedly unlawfully exporting laboratory equipment to Iran. Iran and the U.S. have a history of prisoner swaps dating back to the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover and hostage crisis following the Islamic Revolution. Their most recent major exchange happened in 2016, when Iran came to a deal with world powers to restrict its nuclear program in return for easing sanctions. The West accuses Iran of using foreign prisoners — including those with dual nationality — as bargaining chips, an allegation Tehran rejects. Negotiations over a major prisoner swap faltered after then-president Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal in 2018. From the following year on, a series of attacks and ship seizures attributed to Iran have raised tensions. Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program now enriches closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. While the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has warned that Iran now has enough enriched uranium to produce “several” bombs, months more would likely be needed to build a weapon and potentially miniaturize it to put it on a missile — if Iran decided to pursue one. Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful, and the U.S. intelligence community has kept its assessment that Iran is not pursuing an atomic bomb. Iran has taken steps in recent months to settle some issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the advances in its program have led to fears of a wider regional conflagration as Israel, itself a nuclear power, has said it would not allow Tehran to develop the bomb. Iran also supplies Russia with the bomb-carrying drones Moscow uses to target sites in Ukraine in its war on Kyiv, which remains another major dispute between Tehran and Washington. ___ Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Lee from Washington. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Paul Haven in New York; Ellen Knickmeyer, Eric Tucker and Aamer Madhani in Washington, and Michelle Phillips in New York contributed. [ad_2]
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world-fresh-news · 6 months
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An Iran-US prisoner swap is likely as $6 billion of once-frozen Iranian assets arrive in Qatar
An Iran-US prisoner swap is likely as $6 billion of once-frozen Iranian assets arrive in Qatar DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran and the United States will exchange prisoners on Monday as nearly $6 billion once frozen in South Korea arrives in Qatar, a key element of the planned exchange. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran and the United States will exchange prisoners on Monday as nearly $6…
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