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Early this month, one Iranian and one Israeli tweet created a storm in the already troubled waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

On June 26,the Iranian Embassyin Lebanon wrote a vaguely worded tweet with a picture of an Iranian ship and said that Iran did not need Americas approval to send fuel to Lebanon. The tweet implied the ship carried fuel and was headed to Lebanon. Fearful of U.S. sanctions, Lebanons energy ministry quickly denied ever requesting to import Iranian fuel, but not before speculation was rife that an Iranian tanker was on its way to the port of Beirut.

Early this month, one Iranian and one Israeli tweet created a storm in the already troubled waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

On June 26,the Iranian Embassyin Lebanon wrote a vaguely worded tweet with a picture of an Iranian ship and said that Iran did not need Americas approval to send fuel to Lebanon. The tweet implied the ship carried fuel and was headed to Lebanon. Fearful of U.S. sanctions, Lebanons energy ministry quickly denied ever requesting to import Iranian fuel, but not before speculation was rife that an Iranian tanker was on its way to the port of Beirut.

Then, on July 6, IntelliNews, a blog on Israeli defense and intelligence affairs,tweetedthat Iran had dispatched Arman 114, an Iranian-flagged ship carrying Iranian crude, to Lebanon. Hezbollah is conducting a logistical operation to smuggle Iranian fuel into Lebanon, the tweet read. A few days earlier, Hezbollahs chief Hassan Nasrallah had pledged to import fuel from its patron Iran to emerge as the savior of a country reeling under a devastating shortage of the essential commodity.

Together, the tweets seemed to suggest the expansion of a war between Israel and Iran that had until now mostly taken place in the shadows. For years, Iran and Israel have engaged in tit-for-tat attacks on each others ships in, and beyond, the Mediterranean. The conflict has mostly concentrated on Iranian oil tankers bound for oil-starved Syria. Now it seems the fight is spreading to involve a Lebanon that increasingly seems on the verge of economic collapse.

Arman 114 finally anchored at the Baniyas port in Syria on June 13. TankerTrackers, an online service that tracks and reports shipments of crude oil, said that it had been tracking Arman 114 along with two other ships carrying Iranian crude and confirmed Baniyas, not Beirut, turned out to be their final destination.Latest satellite imagery confirms that all three Iranian tankers went to Baniyas, Syria as planned,TankerTrackers tweeted. But the Iranian Embassys tweet seemed to be mere posturing. It appears the embassy used a stock photo of a ship and in reality there was none en route to Lebanon.

Immediate worries of an escalation between Israel and Iran were warded off but Israels strategy to target Iranian oil tankers is still very much active. Irans determination to respond in kind and attack Israels commercial vessels or those of Americas allies in the Gulf, has not weakened either.

Arman 114s smooth journey illustrated the ease with which Iran has been defying U.S. sanctions. It also displayed that despite U.S. and Israeli awareness of the movement of specific Iranian oil tankers violating sanctions, neither country can stop all such transactions. The United States is constrained by international law and, like Israel, must fear Iranian retaliation. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, a 21-mile-wide strategic waterway through which 20 percent of the global oil supply passes.

Farzin Nadimi, an associate fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert in the security and defense affairs of Iran and the Persian Gulf region, said technically a ship in international waters cannot be stopped unless it violates international maritime law or unless the flag state allows it. If it is known to carry contraband such as drugs, or weapons of mass destruction, there are U.S. laws that allow stopping and searching in the high seas, or under some circumstances such action can even be justified under universal jurisdiction, Nadimi said. The U.S. Congress can also pass a law, or the president may issue an executive order sanctioning individual tankers and ask other countries to stop them as soon as they enter their territorial waters, or face sanctions themselves.

Nadimi added that Iran has one of the largest tanker fleets and a lot of experience in how to conceal the movement of its oil cargoes. Iran regularly changes the flags on its ships, renames tankers, and turns off their automatic identification systemsto avoid being tracked. Moreover, according to aU.S. Treasury report,Iran deployed a range of front companies with help from Hezbollah to be able to sell its oil despite the sanctions.

Even when we could track movements of Iranian tankers there was a lack of will within the U.S. government to stop them, not only because of constraints of international law but also because the U.S. was just worried about Irans retaliation in the Persian Gulf, Nadimi said. Iran has proved it can do some nasty things, he added, alluding to alleged Iranian attacks on Saudi, Emirati, and other vessels. Iran even seized a British-flagged tanker, the Stena Impero, in July 2019, in retaliation for Gibraltar seizing a Syria-bound Iranian oil tanker, the Grace 1, two weeks earlier.

Experts say that while U.S. sanctions have succeeded in blocking the movement of money through banking channels, they achieved little success in stopping Iran from selling crude at reduced prices for cash. Energy analysts have seena steady risein Irans oil exports since late last year. According to United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group and a critic of the 2015 nuclear deal, Syria received the second-most oil barrels from Iran since December 2020; many times more were exportedto China.

Under recently unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel was accused of attacking a dozen Iranian ships, mostly those carrying fuel to Syria and some supplying arms to Irans proxies, but none headed toward China. In April this year, Israel attacked an Iranian vessel called MV Saviz that was anchored in the Red Sea and suspected to be a floating armory for Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. From the Israeli perspective it was an Iranian naval outpost in the Red Sea that endangered safe navigation of Israeli cargo.

Israels new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has held even more hawkish views than his predecessor and has reportedly suggested that Israel must attack Iran whenever its proxiesHezbollah or Hamasblow up anything inside Israel. Less than a month after he came to power, Iran accused Israel of targeting a nuclear facility in Karaj reportedly producing centrifuges to replace those damaged in Israels previous covert attacks at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran.

Many Israeli analysts believe that Israels covert hits inside Iran and overt airstrikes in Syria on Irans arms depots serve Israels strategic interests better than naval attacks. The growing consensus among experts seems to be that Bennett must take only calculated risks in the maritime arena while continuing with land, air, and cybersecurity sabotage of Irans nuclear apparatus. They are unsure, however,whether Bennett, who is eager to come across as even more unforgiving of Iran than Netanyahu, would listen.

Eran Lerman, a former deputy national security advisor for the office of the Israeli prime minister, said that Bennetts policy would differ from Netanyahus only in his dealings with Bidenwith whom he would aim to keep differences behind closed doors instead of making a public spectacle of themwhile maintaining a tough stand against Iran. His intention would be to not undermine the Biden administration but to retain Israels right to act freely, Lerman said.

Others said Israel must avoid getting dragged into a dangerous navalconflict. Shaul Chorev, a retired Israeli rear admiral who heads the Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center at the University of Haifa and previously led the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, advises caution. Attacking Iranian tankers neither discourages Iran from enriching uranium nor from bankrolling Hezbollah and other proxies, Chorev said. A naval conflict comes at a high cost to us too, especially inareas in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea which are outside the range of the Israeli Navy and its ability to protect Israeli-owned vessels sailing in this region.

Meanwhile, the people of Lebanon continue to struggle with fuel scarcity. If the naval war between Israel and Iran expands, that struggle will last a while longer yet.

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Iran and Israel's Naval War in the Mediterranean Is Expanding - Foreign Policy

At first, Masih Alinejad didnt believe the F.B.I. The Iranian-born journalist and activist thought that she was safe after going into exile, in 2009, even as government propaganda continued to target her from afar. State television variously reported that she was a drug addict, accused her of being a spy for Western governments, and claimed that she had been raped in a London subway. Her parents and siblings, who remained in their village, in northern Iran, were repeatedly harassed, threatened with loss of employment, and instructed to lure Alinejad to neighboring Turkey for a family reunion, so that agents could supposedly just talk to her, she told me last week. In 2018, Alinejads sister was forced to go on prime-time television to say that the family was disgraced by Alinejads behavior; they disowned her. After the show, her sobbing mother, who is illiterate and had been married off at the age of fourteen, called Alinejad to report that the government had tried to get her parents to appear on the program, too. Stalin would have been proud, Alinejad recounted in an Op-Ed in the Times, in 2018. Her brother, Alireza, warned her about a potential trap. In 2019, he was arrested, and the next year he was sentenced to eight years in prisonfive for assembly and collusion for action against the countrys security, two for insulting Irans Supreme Leader, and another year for propaganda against the regime, his lawyer reported. Amnesty International condemned the relentless persecution. Arresting the relatives of an activist in an attempt to intimidate her into silence is a despicable and cowardly move, a representative for the organization said. Alinejads brother remains in jail.

Yet the warning from the F.B.I., late last year, struck Alinejadwho now has five million followers on Instagram, a million on her Facebook campaign against compulsory hijab-wearing, a quarter million on Twitter, and a show on the Voice of Americas Persian-language serviceas too bizarre even for the Islamic Republic. In September, F.B.I. agents showed up at her home in Brooklyn, where she was living with her husband and stepchildren, to report that they had uncovered a plot by Iranian intelligence to kidnap or kill her. My first reaction was laughing. I was making a joke, she told me. I told them, Im used to it. I received death threats daily on social media. The agents then revealed that private investigators, allegedly hired by an Iranian intelligence network, had been closely surveilling her for months. They showed her photographs that the operatives had taken of her hourly movements, and also pictures of her family, friends, visitors, home, and even the cars in her neighborhood. When I saw my photosthey even took pictures of my stepsonI was shocked. I got goosebumps. Hes fourteen, she said. She agreed to go to a safe housefirst one, then another, then a third, over several months. It was the beginning of a series of traumas that included separation from her stepchildren, helping the F.B.I. agents create traps for the Iranian network, and the demise of her unwatered houseplants.

On July 13th, the Department of Justice disclosed the details of the pernicious caper. This is not some far-fetched movie plot, the F.B.I. assistant director William F. Sweeney, Jr., said. We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S. based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Four Iranian intelligence agents, or assets, led by Alireza Farahani, were charged with conspiring to abduct Alinejad to stop her from continuing to mobilize public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regimes laws and practices, the U.S. announcement said.

The Iranian kidnapping schemewhich appears to be the first publicized case on U.S. soildated back to at least June, 2020. According to the D.O.J. announcement, the plotters had identified travel routes from Alinejads home to a Brooklyn waterfront, researched a service offering military-style speedboats for maritime evacuation out of New York, and studied sea travel from New York to Venezuela, which has close ties with the Islamic Republic. In a detailed e-mail, Kiya Sadeghi, another of the four indicted Iranian intelligence agents, even instructed the private investigators to take pictures of the envelopes in Alinejads mailbox. Kindly be discreet as they are on the look out, he wrote. The private investigators were told that they were tracking a missing person who had skipped out on debt repayment in Dubai. Last week, the F.B.I. insisted that it had foiled Irans scheme in the United States. Not on our watch, Sweeney said.

Ironically, the nefarious plot has only exposed the regimes profound insecurities and paranoia, four decades after ousting Irans millennia-old monarchy. Even now, they are scared of their own people, Alinejad, the author of The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran, told me. They can censor papers. They can arrest journalists. They can shut down any party, or any womens-rights organization. But they cannot do anything to people sharing stories with me about how they are being oppressed.

Predictably, Irans Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the U.S. charges. This is not the first time that the United States resorts to such Hollywood-like scenarios, the Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a local news agency. But Irans ambitious campaign to silence critics in far-flung places is far from over. The same Iranian intelligence network is also targeting Iranian-born activists living in Canada, Britain, and the United Arab Emirates, the Department of Justice said last week. The Islamic Republic has already succeeded at suppressing other dissidents abroad. In 2019, Iran lured Ruhollah Zam from exile in Paris to Iraq on false pretenses. Like Alinejad, Zam used social mediathrough Amad News, which he launched, and the messaging platform Telegramto amplify public anger and activism, with messages and videos sent to him from inside Iran. He gained more than a million followers on Telegram after posting videos of protests over deteriorating economic conditions, in 2017. He thought that he was safe as long as he was outside Iran. When he arrived in Iraq, Zam was abducted by agents of the Revolutionary Guard and taken back to Tehran, where he was convicted of corruption on earth last year. He was hanged, at the notorious Evin Prison, in December.

Alinejad was not the first American citizen to be targeted. Since the 1979 Revolution, dozens of Americans, and also dual nationals, have been detained in Iran or by its proxies in Lebanon. Four are still being held in Tehran: the businessman Siamak Namazi; his elderly father, Baquer Namazi; the environmental conservationist Morad Tahbaz; and the businessman Emad Sharghi. Worldwide, Iran is increasingly aggressive against exiles, foreign social-media platforms, and other governments. On Thursday, Facebook announced that it had taken down some two hundred accounts run by a group of Iranian hackers, known as Tortoiseshell, who were targeting U.S. military personnel and employees at major defense agencies. This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation, while relying on relatively strong operational security measures to hide whos behind it, Facebook said.

The hackers created sophisticated fictitious profilesoften across multiple platformsin order to collect information, install malware, and trick targets into providing personal information. They pretended to be recruiters in American defense, aerospace, medical, travel, and journalism companies, including CNN. One of the fake job-recruitment sites was modelled on the job-search Web site for the U.S. Department of Labor. They even created fake accounts for branches of the Trump Organization. Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Alphabet also reported detecting operations by the Iranian group on their sites; Twitter said that it was investigating. The Facebook investigation traced a portion of the malware to Mahak Rayan Afraz, an I.T. company in Tehran linked to the Revolutionary Guard.

The alleged kidnapping and hacking operations come at a tenuous juncture for the Biden Administration, which in the spring reopened diplomacy to revive the 2015 nuclear accord between the worlds six major powers and Iran. Donald Trump had withdrawn the United States from the dealknown as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actionin 2018. The negotiations, in Vienna, have been stalled since their sixth round, in June. Over the weekend, Iran announced that it would not participate again until after the inauguration of President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, the hard-line former chief of the judiciary, and the accompanying transfer of power, in early August.

U.S. officials are concerned that the next Iranian government will reject the deal currently on the tableand try to start from scratch, which is unacceptable to the Biden Administration. Tensions escalated over the weekend, after the lead Iranian negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, tweeted that the U.S. should not link the nuclear deal to an exchange of prisoners. Iran, the United States, and Britain could immediately exchange ten detainees, he claimed, without specifying how many from each nation or their identities. In the last major swap, in January, 2016, Iran released five Americans and the United States dropped charges against seven Iranians. The State Department spokesman Ned Price lambasted Irans delay as an outrageous effort to deflect blame for the diplomatic impasse. Araghchis comment about an imminent exchange of detainees, he said, was just another cruel effort to raise the hopes of their families. He added, If Iran were truly interested in making a humanitarian gesture, it would simply release the detainees immediately. The Administration is already facing calls by Republicans to suspend the negotiations altogether.

Meanwhile, Alinejad is still under police protection. The night of the U.S. announcement, she tweeted a video of herselfnow back at homesitting next to a window, with a police car, lights flashing, outside. The four Iranian intelligence agents indicted by the U.S. are still in Iran. The only person arrested was Nellie Bahadorifar, an Iranian-born woman living in California. She was charged with multiple counts of facilitating the plot by providing access to the U.S. financial system, paying the local investigators, and dealing with cash deposits of almost a half million dollars on behalf of the Iranian intelligence network. The prospect of real justice seems elusive. So does any respect for human rights by the Iranian regime.

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Irans Kidnapping Plot Exposes Its Paranoia - The New Yorker

Deterring the United States from "bullying and interventions" in Muslim countries is rewarding Jihad, Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tells the Muslim world in his Hajj message published Monday.

After months of negotiations with Washington and three European powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, Khamenei does not pull punches in a message he delivers annually on the occasion of Hajj, a sacred duty for all Muslims.

This years message is not so different in its content from previous years when the aging anti-Western cleric routinely lambasted the US for opposing his military and regional policies. But this year the message comes amid more than three months of serious talks in Vienna, when many in the West spoke of confidence building with the Islamic Republic to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA.

But most of all, this years message perhaps shows Khameneis frustration that the West insists on discussing Irans interference in regional countries. The United States has said time and again that restoring JCPOA is prelude to more talks to resolve regional issues. Khameneis message is full of references to young people rising against US domination and the West blaming Iran for the resistance.

Last year, Khamenei also unleashed a harsh attack on the United States, but that could be seen as a response to former President Donald Trump who imposed maximum pressure on Iran and in essence demanded capitulation on many fronts.

This year, President Joe Biden has adopted a different approach, calling for talks and compromise to resurrect the Obama-era agreement, which means at least most of the heavy sanctions imposed by his predecessor would be lifted, offering Iran a financial lifeline.

Khamenei called for strengthening the resistance forces against the United States a jargon for Islamic Republics allies and militant proxies in the region, such as the Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, Houthis in Yemen and Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Khamenei in his message also repeated his anti-Western rhetoric, that backwardness of Muslim countries is the fault of the West because of their evil machinations, domination and arrogance against the Muslim world. Although this message has some receptive ears among Muslims, many Sunnis see Khamenei as a Shiite cleric whose rhetoric is crafted from the standpoint of his interests.

Others see that Khameneis view of history, at least in case of Iran is flawed. When Europe began to rise and mustered technology and military power, Iran was suffering from the domination of religious dogma and superstitions, with no secular education, corrupt and weak monarchies where science and good governance were lacking. In fact, it was Ottoman Sultans and Persian kings who realized that they had to emulate the West to maintain independence and compete.

Khamenei argued in his message that Muslim nations had no role and no say in the affairs of their countries in the past 150 years. But he blamed this on the West instead of questioning the authoritarian impulses of local rulers, such as himself. The Islamic Republics violations of human rights and campaign against dissidents is well documented.

Khamenei called for resistance against the United States and condemned inaction and incompetence among Muslim governments, while Iran is now in the grips of multiple crises. One clear example is its inability to vaccinate its population against Covid-19, while other Muslim countries with oil wealth are well ahead in the game with 30-75 percent of the population vaccinated.

Khamenei is known for his anti-Western impulses. In his political worldview Russia or China can do no wrong because they are also anti-Western. He never mentions Russian domination of millions of Muslims and their forced secularization, or in fact Communist indoctrination.

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Amid Negotiations, Iran's Khamenei Unleashes Attack On The US - Iran International

ISTANBUL (AP) Security forces in eastern Turkey have conducted a major operation against people traffickers bringing migrants across the Iranian border, the provincial governors office said Monday.

More than 1,450 migrants were found in abandoned buildings around Mount Erek, which towers over the city of Van, since July 10, Van governors office said.

Eleven organizers were detained, six of whom have been held in prison by a court order. The statement added that 11 barrack-style buildings for holding migrants had been demolished.

The operation comes amid concerns over a possible spike in migrants from Afghanistan before the U.S. pullout and intense fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government forces.

Describing earlier operations by police and border agents, backed by aerial drones, the governors office said 27,230 migrants had been caught crossing the Iranian border so far this year.

Turkeys border with Iran has long been a popular smuggling route for people, mainly Afghans, Iranians and Pakistanis, seeking to enter Turkey before heading west to cities such as Istanbul and Ankara.

The migrants typically hope to raise money in Turkey by working in the black market before heading on to Europe.

Turkey, which hosts around 4 million refugees, is currently building new security measures on its eastern border. Afghans are believed to be the second-largest refugee community after Syrians.

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Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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Turkish operation on Iran border halts over 1,450 migrants - Associated Press

Outgoing Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote in a report to parliament that the Biden administration has agreed to lift almost all U.S. sanctions on Iran to secure a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Why it matters: The report includes details that hadn't been made public before now and is the most official and comprehensive Iranian account of the status of the indirect talks with the U.S.

According to Zarif's report, Biden is prepared to remove not only the sanctions reimposed by former President Donald Trump when he withdrew from the deal, but also most of the sanctions Trump later imposed under his "maximum pressure" strategy.

Zarif's report also covered the steps Iran would have to take to reach a deal, including implementing the additional protocol that allows stricter UN nuclear inspections, redesigning the Arak Heavy Water Reactor, limiting enrichment to 3.67% and turning over more than 300 kg of uranium enriched beyond that level.

What he's saying: Iran has proved it can revive its nuclear program very quickly if it needs to, sometimes even in less than a day," Zarif writes.

Between the lines: Zarif is a longtime advocate of diplomacy on the nuclear issue, and his report stresses what Iran stands to gain from a deal while downplaying any Iranian concessions.

Whats next: Zarif writes that a framework of possible agreement had been reached and he hopes what has been achieved so far will be completed in the beginning of the incoming Iranian government."

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U.S. prepared to lift nearly all Iran sanctions, Zarif tells parliament - Axios