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Islamabad [Pakistan], June 28 (ANI): Twitter in India banned official accounts of Pakistan Embassies in UN, Turkey, Iran and Egypt. Earlier, Twitter also withheld the account of the national public broadcaster in Pakistan Radio Pakistan.

Twitter blocks the account of Pakistani Embassy in UN.

Account of Pakistani Embassy in Turkey is also withheld by Twitter in India.

Moreover, Twitter in India also blocked account of Pakistani Embassy in Iran and Egypt.

Twitter in India, earlier also blocked the account of Pakistani national radio broadcaster Radio Pakistan.

After Twitter in India withheld these official accounts the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged Twitter to restore these accounts with immediate access.

This development comes at a time when the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting earlier blocked 16 YouTube news channels including 6 Pakistan-based channels for spreading disinformation related to Indias national security, foreign relations, and public order.

According to the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, YouTube channels were spreading false, unverified information to create panic, incite communal disharmony, and disturb public order in India.

The blocked social media accounts include six Pakistan-based and 10 India-based YouTube news channels, having a cumulative viewership of over 68 crore.

None of the digital news publishers had furnished information to the Ministry as required under rule 18 of the IT Rules, 2021, the government said.

YouTube channels based in Pakistan were found to have been used in a coordinated manner to post fake news about India on various subjects such as the Indian Army, Jammu, and Kashmir, and Indias foreign relations in the light of the situation in Ukraine among others, it said.

The content of these channels was observed to be completely false, and sensitive from the perspective of national security, sovereignty, and integrity of India, and Indias friendly relations with foreign States.

Moreover, India has earlier called out Pakistan for propagating fake news through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Pakistan is frequently lambasted by the global community due to its violation of human rights. The country also has unstable politics which is gripped by constant protests and demonstrations. And yet, as per the reports by digital forensics, Pakistan carries on with its propaganda to diminish India at world stage.

Apart from the government accounts in Pakistan, in a report by Digital Forensics, Research, and Analytics Center (DFRAC), it was revealed that many fake accounts created by Pakistanis are hiding behind the screens and running hashtags with an agenda to target Indias prestigious institutions.

These Pakistani accounts blatantly spread disinformation. The crucial thing to note here is that some of these accounts were created for the sole purpose of defaming India. After pushing the agenda they changed their username.

All behind the screen who were fuelling this agenda campaign seemed to be copying each others content to escalate the fake narrative. (ANI)

This report is auto-generated from ANI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

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Twitter in India bans accounts of Pakistan Embassies in UN, Turkey, Iran and Egypt - ThePrint

Issued on: 24/06/2022 - 13:36

Tehran (AFP) Iran on Friday dismissed as "ridiculous" allegations by Israel's foreign minister while on a visit to Ankara that the Islamic republic was planning anti-Israeli attacks in Turkey.

"The baseless allegations... are ridiculous and part of a pre-designed plot to destroy relations between the two Muslim countries," foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement.

"It is expected from Turkey not to remain silent in the face of these divisive allegations," he said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Thursday thanked Turkey for thwarting an alleged Iranian assassination plot against its tourists in Istanbul.

"We're not only talking about the murder of innocent Israeli tourists, but also a clear violation of Turkish sovereignty by Iranian terror," Lapid said.

Media outlets in Turkey have reported the arrest of eight people allegedly working for an Iranian intelligence cell that planned to kill Israeli tourists in Istanbul.

Iran and Israel have been engaged in a years-long shadow war but tensions have ratcheted up following a string of high-profile incidents that Tehran has blamed on Israel.

The Islamic republic has pointed at Israel for the killing of Revolutionary Guards Colonel Sayyad Khodai at his Tehran home on May 22.

Two other senior Guard members have also died -- one in a reported accident and the other in a shooting -- in the past month.

The Revolutionary Guard, the ideological arm of Iran's military, said Thursday it was replacing its veteran intelligence chief.

Khatibzadeh stressed that Iran would respond forcefully to "assassinations and acts of sabotage by the Zionist regime" but "without threatening the security of civilians and the security of other countries".

Israel last week urged its citizens to leave Turkey because of the "real and immediate danger" coming from Iranian operatives.

It is still keeping Istanbul at its highest level of travel warning, while putting the rest of Turkey on the second-highest alert.

2022 AFP

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Iran rejects Israeli charges of attacks in Turkey - FRANCE 24 English

Reports that Iran is nearing the point where it could conceivably develop a nuclear weapon are once again causing widespread alarm. The latest information suggests that Irans stockpile of enriched uranium, if significantly further enriched, is more than enough to provide the weapons-grade fissile material needed for a bomb. That alone wouldnt be enough to buildor delivera working bomb, but it does put Tehran closer than ever to equipping one.

The news comes as multilateral talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear dealknown formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOAhave stalled. Iran could return to the negotiating table at the 11th hour, agreeing to return to compliance with the deal, from which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew in 2018, in exchange for sanctions relief and a normalization of relations with the West. But this seems increasingly unlikely, meaning Iran will once again be poised for a nuclear breakout scenario, by which it could slowly accumulate the necessary components for a bomb under the guise of a civilian nuclear program, and then assemble them into a nuclear weapon faster than efforts to stop it can be mobilized. ...

Excerpt from:
Fears of a Nuclear-Armed Iran Might Be Overblown - World Politics Review

Irans defiance of the norms of international law and its subversion of the West continues with no relenting in its intensity and scope. Now, Iran once again sparks tension in the Persian Gulf by embarking on state-sponsored piracy, while its enrichment of uranium is reaching the dangerous weapons-level grade.

On May 27, the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in cooperation with the Iranian Navy, launched a helicopter raid to seize two Greek oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The Prudent Warrior and Delta Poseidon were sailing in international waters, 22 nautical miles off the coast of Iran. The Greek Foreign Ministry condemned Irans actions as tantamount to acts of piracy.

This incident happened just days after Athens announced that it would abide by US sanctions on Russia by handing over a reported 700,000 barrels of Iranian crude oil from the Russian-flagged tanker Lana. The ship is owned by Russias Promsvyazbank, a bank critical to Russias defense sector. The US Treasury designated the bank on Feb. 22 just two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine for operating or having operated in the defense and related materiel and financial services sectors of the Russian Federation economy.

The Lana created a two-for-one sanctions case, as a Russian-flagged ship was carrying Iranian oil. The US confiscated the Iranian oil from the ship. The Russian tanker remains anchored off Karystos, in the central part of the Aegean Sea.

For all his flaws, Thomas Jefferson was one of the most accomplished political thinkers and leaders of the post-enlightenment era....

The two Greek ships and their crews are still in Iranian custody. For Iranian propaganda, this act of piracy is legitimate retribution for the Lana incident.

Nour News, a website close to Irans Supreme National Security Council and the de facto information branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, announced that Iran would take punitive action after the two tankers were seized. Nour News justified the action as a legal and proportionate response to the Greek governments action against Irans interests. It also accused Greece and the United States of economic terrorism against Iran.

On June 4, during a ceremony marking the death anniversary of his predecessor and late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei acknowledged that Iran took the two Greek oil tankers. They stole our oil on Greek shores, Khamenei said in his 80-minute speech. Then, our self-sacrificing and valiant soldiers made up for it and confiscated the enemys ship carrying oil. Then, the enemy accused Iran of theft via his comprehensive propaganda and media empire.

Khomeini defended the hijacking of the Greek tankers as an act of reprisal. Who is a thief? he asked. You stole our oil and we took it back from you! Taking back stolen property is not theft! It is you who are thieves! The Americans order the Greek government and they obey by stealing our oil.

The Quds Force is an IRGC military intelligence division. The United States has designated the Quds Force as a terrorist group for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. This act of piracy is but another incident in a pattern of illegal acts by Iranian authorities undermining international movement in the seas. In 2019, Iranian forces assumed a series of limpet mine attacks in the Persian Gulf that left many tankers damaged. In July 2021, an Israeli-linked oil tanker was attacked by a military Iranian drone in an incident that left two European crew members dead. Just a week later, Iranian paramilitary forces also briefly seized a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the United Arab Emirates.

The piracy campaign and other violent provocations should be considered as the United States and others continue negotiations aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal.

According to a June 16 New York Times report, Iran is constructing an extended new network of underground tunnels at its Natanz nuclear site, its primary enrichment facility. This underground network appears to be intended to provide safe facilities for an enrichment facility, providing relative immunity to cyberattacks and bombing.

Although Iran has no obligation to provide outsourced information, it has notified the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] since the start of construction work to relocate the Karaj TESA plant around the Natanz site, Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Nour News. He went on to attack Israel once again: Considering the full transparency of our countrys actions, there is no doubt that the atmosphere created by the media affiliated with the Zionist current will not lead to ambiguity and political abuses.

In another Nour News article, Iranian sources admit that the nuclear program is in full development: Today, even Irans enemies acknowledge the fact that, despite the imposition of oppressive sanctions, Irans peaceful nuclear program is advancing at a remarkable pace, and sanctions have failed to have the slightest mitigating effect on the peaceful programs that Westerners mistakenly express concern about it.

The IAEA which despite repeated warnings by Israel and the United States was disregarding Irans unilateral actions, now seems aware of the realities on the ground. The IAEA cannot confirm the correctness and completeness of Irans declarations under its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, Director General Rafael Grossi told the IAEAs Board of Governors on June 6.

According to Grossi, Iran has not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the Agencys findings at three undeclared locations in Iran. Iran has also not informed the IAEA of the current location, or locations, of the nuclear material and/or of the equipment contaminated with nuclear material, that was moved from Turquzabad in 2018. Such a statement reveals the failure of the IAEAs bureaucratic approach.

Earlier this month, Tehran announced the removal of 27 tamper-proof surveillance cameras at nuclear sites previously installed by experts and functioning as IAEAs monitoring system. This action severely impairs the IAEAS ability to observe and evaluate the Iranian nuclear program.

As a response, the Biden administration announced new sanctions against Irans petrochemical industry June 16, with the aim of compelling Iran to comply with the JCPOA. Still, despite all these brazen violations of any security guarantees on its nuclear program and Congressional opposition, the Biden administration continues to declare its commitment to the general framework of the JCPOA negotiations. Now, a bipartisan majority in Congress wants a renegotiation of the original deal.

On Sunday, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bill Russo told the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that it was still possible to return to some form of an agreement. We believe that the nuclear deal is possible, but it depends on Iran, Russo said.

The indications that Iran is adopting an even more hard-line stance are mounting. On June 18, the former editor of radical daily Kayhan, Mehdi Nasiri, wrote that Iran is moving toward a war: Evidence including the suspension of nuclear negotiations in Vienna and the escalation of tensions between Tehran and the IAEA might indicate that the Islamic Republic is interested in war and such a war is likely to start.

As Joe Biden prepares to make his first Middle East visit as president, it would be wise to bear in mind the repeated violations of agreements and the Iranian regimes aggression. Iran continues to support terrorist groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Irans cyberwar capabilities have been considerably upgraded with Russian help, enabling it to perform repeat attacks against the US and other Western targets.

Despite all the sanctions imposed by the United States, Iran is moving ever closer to obtaining nuclear weapons. Reports indicate that Iran simply doesnt want a deal.

The question for the United States, therefore, is what happens next? The status quo means Iran produces nuclear weapons. Failure to find new ways to dissuade the regime costs the US its credibility vis--vis its rivals, imperils its allies in the Middle East, and encourages further disruptive actions by Iran.

Ioannis E. Kotoulas (Ph.D. in History, Ph.D. in Geopolitics) is Adjunct Lecturer in Geopolitics at the University of Athens, Greece. A version of this article was originally published by The Investigative Project on Terrorism.

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Iran Descends Into Outright Piracy and Confrontation With the West - Algemeiner

Obviously, I was not able to get that carnage out of my head, nor do I think I will ever be able to despite living in Spain. That's simply because that culture of weapons is already part of me. It has shaped my personality, molding me through fear and desolation (also in criticism), which has happened to many in the "land of freedom." There is damage in that daily violence that pierces you inside and it takes a lot to heal; I speak from that damage, the one that still eats me from inside as I write.

Not even two weeks had passed since Uvalde when the media announced yet another massacre, this time in an Oklahoma hospital: five dead, including the presumed murderer. Minutes later, some newspapers spoke of a "triple simultaneous shooting." Since, similar incidents were added: one in a school in California and the other in a supermarket in Pennsylvania. The headline, as spectacular as it is worrying, was, however, false, since some of us know perfectly well that shootings are daily events and not an extraordinary event.

Due to their frequency, only the most serious "incidents" are reported. It depends on the number of deaths, age, race, area: life value keeps its hierarchies. However, only in Philadelphia, the city where I lived until a few days ago, the historical record for homicides was broken last year: 562, most by firearms.

Together with the increase in other types of crimes, this is why I recently changed my habits completely: not going to festivals or concerts, generally avoiding crowds. If I met someone in a bar, I immediately located the emergency exit; sometimes, I would ask my companions "do you also think about it?," and the answer was always yes.

Given the numerous notices I received from the university, warning of some danger on campus, like "robbery with a pistol on X street, police in the area," I increased the hours of teleworking. In the end, I was confined to my house more often than I wanted to, breathing a kind of a ubiquitous alarm, close to panic but not there yet every time I crossed the threshold and ventured out into the street. That was a daily occurrence, and I'm not exaggerating. The perception of inhabiting a constant tension, like the rubber band of a slingshot that is about to be released. A war. And still, I strived to build a minimal sense of normality.

The United States, with some 330 million inhabitants, has 400 million weapons in the hands of civilians alone, a figure that has increased greatly since the pandemic began. This is a phenomenon exclusive to this country, as is its dubious honor of having the biggest incarcerated population and the fact that it has the most expensive healthcare system in the world.

To understand the permissiveness when it comes to carrying and using weapons military weapons in many cases it is necessary to take into account how crime contributes to the lucrative work of private prisons, and how the health business conglomerate benefits from the destruction of bodies. In fact, it is not uncommon to find online campaigns of those injured in these "incidents" begging for donations that allow them to pay their medical bills.

This systemic problem, from which it follows that death is a big business, is inherent to the socio-political functioning of the United States. In other countries, life is worth something, and even money: A state that has to bear the health costs of its sick population will invest in disease prevention, but the United States is governed by "necropolitics," where a ruling class gets to decide who lives and dies. An example of this is also the more than 100,000 fatalities in 2021 caused by the opioid crisis, from which Purdue Pharma has particularly benefited.

If these causes explain the underlying scenario, it is necessary to resort to the omnipresence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the financing of the different electoral campaigns to understand the aberrant statements of many politicians who advocate these days for arming even more the population, including teachers. Supposedly, with the objective of defending themselves from the "bad guys," as Trump claimed.

That former president has received almost 16 million dollars out of the total of 148 that, according to an investigation by The Boston Globe, has been disbursed by this powerful lobby since 2010 almost exclusively in favor of Republican representatives. It goes without saying that nothing will change while Congress still needs a large majority to pass any legislation restricting gun ownership and one of the two parties is bought by the NRA.

Finally, over the decades, the Supreme Court has updated the collective right to bear arms in the context of a militia that protects the states, included in the Second Amendment of the Constitution, until it has become an individual right.

In the miraculous case that some federal regulation was implemented to put limits on the ease to acquire weapons, the highest judicial authority would knock it down. Hence the absurdity of speaking of the "weapons debate." (The latest decision on Thursday established the Constitutional right to carry weapons in public.)

There is no such debate; there are, though, offerings and laments, putrid flowers that lie on the altars dedicated to avoidable victims, disjointed prayers and a lot of sensationalism, attempts at political profitability and a rise in arms sales with each massacre, but there is not a debate.

Life only acquires value the closer it comes to death it's the market, my friends! Out of fear of a bullet, I grabbed my things and escaped from that nightmare. I, who can still tell the tale. I, who can still say that in Spain children are not taught how to deal with bullet shots, to seek refuge from the constant threat. As in a nursery in the U.S., where not so long ago these words could be read on the blackboard:

Alert, alert!

Close the door.

Turn off the light,

don't say a word.

Under the desk,

to your hiding place!

Alert, alert!

Open the door.

There's no danger now,

you can go play!*

*Translation of a song used in a shooting drill in a nursery school in the United States. It is included in my book "Ao 9. Crnicas catastrficas en la era Trump" (Year 9: Chronicles of Disaster in the Trump Era).

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Why The West Is Finally Taking A Harder Line On Iran - Worldcrunch