Israeli Defense Chief Visits US Navy Center In Bahrain
Israel's defense minister visited the US Navy Fifth Fleet's headquarters in Bahrain on Thursday amid heightened tensions following drone and missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates.
Israel's defense minister visited the US Navy Fifth Fleet's headquarters in Bahrain on Thursday amid heightened tensions following drone and missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates.
Israel's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday Benny Gantz would sign a security cooperation agreement with Bahrain, which along with the UAE normalized relations with Israel in 2020, partly out of shared concerns about Iran.
Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet's headquarters as well as some operations for CENTCOM, a US military coordination umbrella organization for the Middle East that Israel joined last year.
"Against a backdrop of increasing maritime and aerial threats, our ironclad cooperation is more important than ever," Gantz said on Twitter after the naval base visit.
Israel this week is joining a 60-nation US-led Middle East naval exercise alongside the UAE and Bahrain and, for the first time, publicly alongside Saudi Arabia and Oman, two counties it has no diplomatic relations with.
Israel's defense ministry gave no details of what a security accord with Bahrain would include.
Gantz flew to Bahrain for the two-day trip on an Israeli air force transport plane. It was the first time an Israeli defense chief had visited the Gulf nation or that an Israeli military aircraft had landed there.
The UAE on Wednesday said it intercepted three that entered its airspace over unpopulated areas in the fourth such attack in the past few weeks.
Report by Reuters
Alireza Dabir, President of Iran’s Wrestling Federation, has said the Iran team will not travel for friendly competitions in Arlington, Texas, due February 12.
This followed the US denying visas to six members of the Iranian party, including Dabir, two wrestlers, a coach, the team manager, and a referee. The federation president conveyed the decision in a letter to the president of USA Wrestling, Bruce Baumgartner.
Earlier, a controversy had erupted when Dabir publicly repeated the slogan "Death to America" often used by supporters of the clerical regime in Iran.
Dabir, a Sydney Olympics gold medalist in freestyle wrestling, was the first to be denied a US visa, which came after remarks he made in a television program in early January.
"We always chant ‘Death to America’ but it's important to show it in action,” Dabir said during an interview on the anniversary of the 2020 killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani by a US drone strike in Baghdad. "Some talk a lot but don’t do much. We need to prove [our beliefs] in action.”
Sardar Pashaei, an Iranian wrestler who moved to the US in 2009, called in a tweet January 5 for Dabir to be denied a visa as he was “anti-American.” Pashaei alleged that Dabir held a US ‘green card,’ which would entitle him to live and work in the US, although Dabir later explained he had surrendered the card seven years ago because he did not "like the US".
In his letter to USA Wrestling, Dabir criticized the late decision over the Iranians’ visit. “Your country’s officials refused to issue visas despite all preliminary arrangements made by members of the Iranian team, presenting all necessary documents and repeated follow-up inquiries,” he wrote, adding that US consular officials in Dubai had carried out a "five-hour-long interview-interrogation" of the team's coach.
US Team Invited To Iran
Dabir invited the US wrestling team to visit Iran to hold the competition there. "I am personally sure that you and the good American wrestlers had and have no role in these political, anti-athletic matters," he wrote, saying wrestling fans would receive them "with open arms."
In 1998, in what was widely dubbed ‘sports diplomacy,’ a wrestling team became the first US sports team to visit Iran since the 1979 Revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah. Six American wrestlers with the American flag emblazoned on their tracksuits competed at the Takhti Cup in Tehran and were cheered by Iranian wrestling fans.
Since then, the US wrestling team has visited Iran 15 times for tournaments, while Iranian wrestlers have made 16 visits to the US. In January 2017, Iran was among seven majority-Muslim nations whose citizens were banned from visiting the US by President Donald Trump.
The Iranian government bars its athletes to compete against Israelis and many Iranian sports people have gone into exile for this and other restrictions.
Pashaei, one of these athletes, welcomed the decision to bar the Iranians. "This is a clear message to those who say ‘Death to America’ and at the same time want to come to America," he tweeted Thursday.
The US secretary of state has welcomed Ramin Toloui as the new assistant secretary of state for the bureau of economic and business affairs.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Antony Blinken said the bureau will benefit from his extensive experience, “as we advance a foreign policy that delivers for the American people”.
Toloui was the assistant secretary of the treasury for international finance and development in the Obama administration and was appointed as the Biden’s administration nominee for assistant state secretary on July 30, 2021. He was confirmed by the Senate on December 16, 2021.
The purpose of the bureau is paving the way for American companies doing business in global markets, and leveraging economic tools to deny financing to terrorists, human rights abusers, and corrupt officials.
He is professor of finance at Stanford University, and his research focuses on international economic policy, financial crises, and the economic impact of artificial intelligence.
As Blinken’s point person for negotiating business agreements, Toloui’s expertise can be used to curb Iran’s network of money laundering and economic support for terrorist groups in the world as well as in the trade war with China.
Toloui was born and raised in Iowa and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and an MPhil from Oxford University.
Twitter and Facebook have suspended pages and profiles of an Iranian disinformation unit that was targeting nationalist and ultra-religious Jews in Israel.
According to the BBC on Thursday, the alleged foreign interference campaign ran an elaborate network across multiple social media platforms posing as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish news group that supports extreme right-wing groups. The aim appears to have been sowing discord and inflame tensions with Palestinian.
The Israeli disinformation watchdog FakeReporter uncovered the group's Iranian origin, saying it sought to fuel "religious war" by amplifying "fear, hatred and chaos".
The network, which remains active on the messaging channel Telegram, recirculated articles and posts supporting far-right politicians, encouraged protests and promoted anti-government and anti-Arab sentiment.
Facebook says the accounts were part of attempts to reappear after it took down "a small Iranian influence operation" last March, adding that Iran-based groups are persistent and well-resourced.
The social media network called the Aduk -or strictly religious - was created as a Hebrew acronym of "Virtual religious union for the religious community".
The network was well versed in the Israeli culture and politics and went to extensive lengths to look genuine. They had created a page for a fictitious bakery in an ultra-Orthodox Israeli town, and in another case stolen the online identity of an ultra-religious Jewish man from Russia who died four years ago.
The United Arab Emirates said it intercepted three drones that entered its airspace over unpopulated areas early on Wednesday in the fourth such attack in three weeks.
The unprecedented first three assaults, including a missile attack on Monday during a visit by Israel's president, were launched by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis in an escalation with a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which includes the UAE.
The Houthis have not taken responsibility for the latest attack, which was claimed by a little-known group calling itself the "True Promise Brigades", according to US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which follows jihadist websites.
The group's only other claim was in January 2021, when it said it launched a drone at Saudi Arabia.
If confirmed, the claim by the "True Promise Brigade" could indicate an upswing in violence involving militias seeking to help Iran oppose Western and Gulf Arab adversaries, according to some analysts.
"If Alwiyat al-Waad al-Haq came out of hibernation and did launch drones at the UAE ... then this was likely an Iran-directed or at very least Iran-tolerated operation," Michael Knights at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy said in a Twitter post, using the group's Arabic name.
Sunni Muslim Gulf powers have called on global powers trying to salvage a nuclear pact with Iran to also tackle Shi'ite Iran's regional proxies and missiles program.
Iran's foreign minister discussed Yemen with his Emirati counterpart by telephone on Wednesday.
The UAE largely reduced its military presence in Yemen in 2019 and has been engaging with Tehran under de-escalation efforts largely driven by economic priorities.
An Iranian opposition group claims the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard has formed a naval militia unit to help its proxy forces.
According to a report by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is the political wing of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the new naval militia is part of the Qods (Quds) force, which operates outside of Iran’s borders.
"The Qods Force has been recruiting mercenaries for newly created, armed and trained terrorist units to attack ships and maritime targets in the region," it said, alleging that the naval unit is recruiting people from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Africa.
The 55-page report says the IRGC is training the units in the Caspian Sea district of Zibakenar in the northern province of Gilan before deploying them to the Arabian Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.
The group said the mission of the new unit is to "disrupt maritime navigation of commercial ships, to attack ports, conduct ship hijackings and plant mines", and provided examples of such operations using small boats off Yemen's Red Sea port of Hudaydah.
It is not immediately possible to verify the claim, but the IRGC has an active military academy in the coastal county of Zibakenar since 2015.
Earlier last month, the US seized thousands of weapons destined for the Houthi rebels in Yemen from the Iranian port of Jask.
