Britain has not issued invitations to King Charles' coronation to the leaders of Russia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela, a British source said on Tuesday.
Heads of state from other nations with whom Britain has full diplomatic ties were invited, as were representatives of British realms and overseas territories. Invitations were issued to senior diplomats, rather than heads of state, for North Korea and Nicaragua.
Reuters quoted UK sources as saying that Iran, and the other countries seen as pariah states have not been invited to the historic event.
The United Kingdom, along with the European Union and the United States have issued a series of sanctions against Iran since September 2022 for human rights violations and weapons transfers.
Iranian security forces killed more than 500 civilians and arrested more than 20,000 after anti-regime protests broke out last year over the killing of a young woman, Mahsa, Amini in 'hijab police' custody.
Iran has also been sending killer drones and reportedly other weapons to Russia that have been used against civilian targets in Ukraine.
There are demands among British lawmakers and the Iranian community to fully proscribe the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group, mainly for their role in the bloody suppression of protests and their support for terror groups in the Middle East.
With reporting by Reuters
According to our sources, the official invitation of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was made following numerous requests because the Palestinian group is struggling with financial problems.
Haniyeh is expected to visit Iran in the near future, the Gaza-based terror group announced last Friday, April 28. Haniyeh's visit will be in relation to “political and field developments,” Hamas said, with Haniyeh expressing thanks and appreciation for the call, confirming his acceptance of the invitation and his intention to go to Tehran soon.
Iran International’s sources claimed that Hamas’ assets have been confiscated in several countries and currently the channels through which the group could receive aid in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are also blocked. Therefore, the group sees the Islamic Republic as among its few sources of income.
The sources added that although the Islamic Republic continues to provide financial aid to Hamas despite its own economic situation, Tehran is not satisfied with the performance of this group against Israel and is unlikely to give more aid to this group.
In December, Palestinian Arabic language daily newspaper Al-Quds cited informed sources in Lebanon as saying that the Islamic Republic had cut off its financial support for some Palestinian groups, without specifying which groups. General belief is that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were the main recipients of financial aid from the Islamic Republic, among which Hamas and Islamic Jihad are known to be receiving the lion’s share of Tehran’s aid.
According to Al-Quds sources, these groups depend on Iran's financial aid to pay the salaries of their leaders and members as well as the expenses for other activities. The Islamic Republic’s cutting off aid caused serious problems both in the Gaza Strip and outside the Palestinian territories, to the extent that in some cases, these groups and their leaders have not been able to pay their utility bills, the paper reported.
In March 2022, Haniyeh revealed that the Islamic Republic paid a total of $70 million to Hamas to help it develop missiles and defense systems.
During an interview with Al-Jazeera, Haniyeh said different countries help in financing the group, but Iran is the biggest donor. The head of Hamas political bureau added that thanks to the aid from Iran, his group managed to have a comprehensive defense strategy in its confrontation with the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip in 2021.
He was referring to the two-week outbreak of violence in May 2021 that was called operation “Sword of Jerusalem” by Hamas but dubbed operation “Guardian of the Walls” by Israel. Hamas reportedly fired more than 4,000 rockets and missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome defense system.
Haniyeh added that Iran backs the Shiite groups within its framework of support for the “axis of resistance” in the region – a term used by Tehran for its aligned militia forces -- noting that Tehran also supports Sunni movements against Israel.
Following normalization of its ties with Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabia also invited a senior delegation of Hamas to the kingdom in April. With China's mediation, Saudi Arabia normalized ties with Iran on March 10 and returned its relations with Syria to the level before the Syrian war. The Saudi embassies in Iran and Syria are scheduled to reopen in the coming weeks.
The Hamas-affiliated al-Resalah newspaper wrote said at the time that Haniyeh, and the head of Hamas Diaspora Office Khaled Mashaal, who have been living in Qatar in the past years, traveled to Riyadh at the head of a high-level delegation. In recent years, relations between Hamas and Saudi Arabia have been tense, with the Kingdom detaining some members of the group, accusing them of supporting terrorism. The tensions mounted as Hamas drew closer to the Islamic Republic.
In December, Lebanese media reported that Hezbollah is also facing financial problems due to the situation in Iran, as it cannot import Iranian goods to sell at a discount to its supporters.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen earlier in the year that “Iran is like a cancer. It finances Hamas, the Jihad, and Hezbollah.” Late in April, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with heads of two of the regime's terror proxies -- Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement -- during a visit to Lebanon.
On Saturday, Iran International television released its exclusive report about the issue, leaking a confidential letter from the country’s National Cartographic Center addressed to former agriculture minister Javad Sadatinejad, who was removed by President Ebrahim Raisi mid-April without announcing any concrete reasons.
In the letter, Ali Javidaneh an official at the center says that about 550 square kilometers of land in and around the capital Tehran (about the size of the UK city of Manchester or the US city of El Paso, Texas)is sinking an average of over 13 centimeters (about 5.12 inch) per year.
He said that parts of critical infrastructures in the area are affected by subsidence, adding that parts of the highway and the area’s power transmission lines as well as part of the railway pass through the affected areas.
According to another document with details about land subsidence across the country, 380 cities and towns and 9,200 villages are at risk of land subsidence and in some cases the entire area of the cities are located in the subsidence zones.
According to the data in the report,which was not made available to the public either, almost all the provinces of the country are affected by the issue. Bahreman, a city in the central province of Kerman, is on top of the list with 42 centimeters (about 1.38 ft) subsidence per year.
A day after the Iran International’s report, the National Cartographic Center unveiled a map of the country’s land subsidence during a geomatics event in Tehran.
Confirming our report, MasomehAmighpey, an official of the center, was cited by state media as saying that "In the assessments, we identified 245 subsidence prone areas, 30% of which have a high rate of subsidence." She added that 14 metropolises of the country are affected by land subsidence, and according to the statistics of the Energy Ministry, 70% of the country's plains are in crisis due to mismanagement.
Land subsidence is not limited to big cities with big construction projects. In many areas in Iran cracks and huge hollows that resemble meteor craters have appeared in the ground in recent years.
Experts say that over-extraction of ground water has led for cavities being formed underground which in turn lead to subsidence.
According to a report in March, the current level of land subsidence in Iran is “critical", with experts claiming it puts the lives of more than 39 million people at risk, about half of the country’s population.
Several factors have caused the situation to reach breaking point, including dam construction, climate change, inefficient water consumption by agriculture and industries, and the use of underground aquifers as sources for illegal agricultural water extraction wells.
Ali Beitollahi, heading the disaster task force on the issue at the Road, Housing and Urban Development Research Center of Iran, said the approximate area of subsidence zones in the country is now 18.5 million hectares, almost 11% of Iran's total area.
However, international reports claim the danger is even worse, nearing a humanitarian crisis. Science journal claims that more than 98% of Iran's 1.648 million km of land faces land subsidence.
Internationally, a rate of subsidence greater than 4mm (about 0.16 in) per year is considered a crisis and yet Iran's land is sinking at an astonishing rate of 6cm (about 2.36 in) per year in average as a result of 25 years of water level decline in the plains.
Ground subsidence in urban areas has resulted in power outages, bursting of gas pipes, deformation of rails, emergence of sinkholes, tilting of buildings, the appearance of cracks and ditches in roads and even loss of human life.Continued water level declines will reduce the ground's water permeability and turn fertile plains into barren deserts.
