The Iranian Intelligence Ministry said its forces have disbanded a network of agents affiliated with Israel’s spy agency that had been deployed to Iran to carry out terrorist operations.
The Intelligence Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that members of a terrorist group affiliated with Mossad were identified and arrested by Iranian security forces before they could carry out any act of sabotage.
Eight years after a dry run for the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) was conducted between Mumbai and Astrakhan via Bandar Abbas, the Russian authorities are keen to convert this corridor into a significant logistics artery. The centrepiece of such plans is to make Astrakhan, a city about 100 kilometres north of the Caspian Sea, a gateway for Indian products to Russia and Central Asia.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has reappointed Ahmad Jannati, 95, to another six-year term as the head of the Guardian Council. If still alive by then, he will finish his term when he turns 101. According to Khamenei’s decree, issued on Saturday, two other clerics, Mohammad-Reza Modarresi Yazdi and Mehdi Shabzendedar Jahromi were also reinstated in their positions in the Council. The Guardian Council sometimes referred to as the Constitutional Council, is comprised of Islamic sharia law experts tasked with checking legislations approved by Iran’s parliament against the Constitution and sharia law and approving candidates in various elections in Iran.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is witnessing a deadly and escalating nutritional crisis in Ethiopia’s Afar region, requiring a major humanitarian response. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled conflict in Afar and are now facing drought, hunger, and an extreme lack of access to health care, along with the host communities.
How to Finally Fix the Broken System for Alleviating Hunger
The world’s agricultural and food systems face a perfect storm. Overlapping crises, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, wars in Ukraine and elsewhere, supply chain bottlenecks for both inputs like fertilizer and outputs like wheat, and natural disasters induced by climate change have together caused what the United Nations has called “the greatest cost-of-living crisis in a generation.” World leaders cannot afford to ignore this unfolding catastrophe: rapidly increasing food prices not only cause widespread human suffering but also threaten to destabilize the political and social order. Already, along with skyrocketing energy costs, surging food prices have helped bring about the collapse of the Sri Lankan government.
Introduction
The first time Russia invaded Ukraine in the twenty-first century, the Wagner Group was born. The now widely profiled private military company (PMC) played an important role in exercising Russian national power over the Crimea and portions of the Donbas—while giving Moscow a semblance of plausible deniability. In the near decade since, the Russian PMC sector has grown considerably, and is active in more than a dozen countries around the world. PMCs are paramilitary organizations established and run as private companies—though they often operate in contract with one or more states. They are profit-motivated, expeditionary groups that make a business of the conduct of war.1 PMCs are in no way a uniquely Russian phenomenon, yet the expanding footprint of Russian PMCs and their links to state interests call for a particularly Russian-focused analysis of the industry. The growth of these firms and their direct links to the Kremlin’s oligarch network as well as Moscow’s foreign media, industrial, and cyber activities present a challenge to the United States and its allies as they seek to counter Russian malicious activities abroad.
Lebanese political analyst Mikhael Awad said in a July 18, 2022 show on Al-Manar TV (Hizbullah-Lebanon) that according to the “data,” a potential war between Israel and Hizbullah would be decided in only two days. He explained that Hizbullah would rapidly reach Nazareth and the Israeli-Arab town of Umm Al-Fahm, and that within a short period of time, Israel would have no territory left from which to launch missiles, planes, and warships. He also said that war is the cheaper and “easier” option for Lebanon, and he gave the example of the Second Lebanon War, claiming that everything that had been destroyed in the war had been rebuilt at no cost to Lebanon. In addition, he said that he hopes war breaks out because Israel is a “cancerous growth” that can only be removed surgically. Moreover, Awad said that such a war would spell the end of Israel, of the current Arab regimes, and of the Sykes-Picot divisions, and that it would restructure the entire world around the “pillar” of the “resistance”. He added that the U.S. and Europe would not participate in the war because this would drive up the price of oil.
In a July 18, 2022 interview on Russia Today TV, former Iranian diplomat Amir Mousavi was asked about the validity of senior Iranian official Kamal Kharrazi’s previous-day statement on Al-Jazeera Network that Iran is a nuclear threshold country and that it has the ability to produce nuclear weapons (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 9694). Mousavi responded that there is no doubt that Iran can produce nuclear weapons. He added that there is pressure from inside Iran and from the region to change Khamenei’s fatwa banning nuclear weapons and that this may lead to reconsideration of the alleged fatwa. (see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis Series No. 1022 and No. 1151). He explained that Iran has thus far refrained from producing nuclear weapons due to its “moral values” and its “principles,” but that Iran’s leadership is under domestic and regional pressure from its supporters to reconsider this policy.
Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, met July 24 with Iraqi officials in Baghdad, including Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, reportedly discussing the establishment of a new energy government for the Kurdistan Region.
President of the BRICS International Forum Purnima Anand revealed Egypt’s interest in joining the group along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the position is to be discussed at the BRICS summit scheduled for next year in South Africa.