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Iran has sentenced an Iranian-British woman accused of trying to overthrow the Islamic republic's government to five years in prison.

Mizan Online, a website affiliated with Iran's judiciary, quoted a prosecutor on January 22 as saying that the sentence against Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been finalized.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, confirmed that an appeals court upheld her sentence for the charge of "acting against national security." Her family denies she has violated any laws.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency's charity organization, was detained in April while attempting to fly back to England with her young daughter, and had her passport seized. She was in Iran to visit relatives in the southeastern city of Kerman.

Richard Ratcliffe said among the accusations against his wife is that she had previously worked as head of recruitment for BBC Persian.

Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO Monique Villa said Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, never worked for BBC Persian.

Iranian authorities have arrested a number of dual citizens on security-related charges since the Islamic republic reached a nuclear accord with world powers in 2015.

Iran does not recognize dual nationality, meaning those detained cannot receive consular assistance.

British Prime Minister Theresa May mentioned Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case in a phone call with Iranian President Hassan Rohani in August.

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Iran Sentences Iranian-British Woman To Five Years On Security Charges - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

This photo shows a pressure control station on the Iran-Turkey gas pipeline.

Iran welcomes Russian participation in the $2.5 billion construction of a pipeline to transfer Iranian gas to Europe, a deputy oil minister says.

IGAT-9 is a 35 billion cubic meter per year pipeline that Iran plans to use to send gas from its giant South Pars field to Europe via Turkey.

Russian companies have indicated interest in Irans gas development projects, with state-run Gazprom recently signing a letter of intentwith the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC).

We are welcoming Russians participation in the project to build Irans IGAT-9 with $2.5 billion of investment, Deputy Minister of Petroleum Hamid Reza Araqi said in remarks published by the Mehr news agency on Monday.

Araqi said Iran has raised gas production to about 700 million cubic meters per day, adding this capacity is expected to pass 1 billion cubic meters next year when new South Pars phases become operational.

In tandem with the rise in production capacity, the countrys capacity for storage and transportation of gas must also increase, he said.

Araqi touched on plans to build more high-pressure gas pipelines and gas compressor stations, including the 1,900-kilometer trunk line to carry about 110 million cubic meters of gas per day from southern Iran to the countrys north for exports to Europe.

The Russians can participate in the construction of this pipeline but NIGCs priority is to hold international tenders for the project, he added.

Gazprom and NIGC have already signed MoUs for building high-pressure units and gas storage facilitiesas well as for implementing joint projects in neighboring countries and marketing.

Iran with its 34 trillion cubic meters (tcm) of natural gas reserves, or around 18% of the world's total, has the potential to become one of the top gas producers.

The country exports about 9 billion cubic meters of gas a year to Turkey and also swaps gas with Azerbaijan and with Armenia for electricity while it imports from Turkmenistan for use in its northern provinces.

One key challenge, however, is a dramatic rise in domestic gas consumption which has made Iran the world's fourth biggest gas consumer behind the US, Russia and China.

Several gas production projects are in various stages of implementation mainly the development of the giant South Pars field.

Another major project is the North Pars field with estimated reserves of 1.3 trillion cubic meters. In 2006, China's CNOOC signed a $16 billion deal for the development of the North Pas field and build a four-train LNG facility with a 20 million tonneper year capacity. The agreement has yet to be finalized.

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Iran welcomes Russia in Europe gas transfer plan - Press TV

Wall Street Journal

Trump, Netanyahu Discuss Iran and Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process Wall Street Journal President Donald Trump spoke Sunday by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about ways to strengthen relations between their two countries and threats posed by Iran, according to the White House. Mr. Netanyahu's office described the ...

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Trump, Netanyahu Discuss Iran and Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process - Wall Street Journal

Story highlights

The Prime Minister said that a top concern for Israel was the nuclear threat still posed by Iran under the terms of the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement.

"The supreme goal of the state of Israel continues to be stopping the Iranian threat and stopping the threat from the bad nuclear deal signed with Iran," he said.

Netanyahu has been a fierce opponent of the nuclear pact, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers -- the United States, the UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany.

Under the deal, Iran must reduce its uranium stockpile by roughly 98%, phase out its centrifuges over the next 15 years, limit research activities, allow heightened inspections and ship spent fuel outside of the country.

In return, many of the international sanctions imposed on Iran were lifted.

Trump has repeatedly denounced the nuclear deal calling it "incompetently negotiated" and pledged to renegotiate its terms.

Diplomatic ties between the US and Iran had only begun to thaw in the final years of the Obama administration, but the agreement's future has been placed in doubt since Trump's electoral victory.

Netanyahu and Trump were scheduled to speak Sunday evening.

CNN's Amir Tal and Ian Lee contributed to this report.

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Netanyahu to discuss Syria, Palestinians and Iran with Trump - CNN

LONDON British Prime Minister Theresa May will express her beliefs on the value of free trade and also her support for the Iran nuclear deal when she meets U.S. President Donald Trump later this week, her spokeswoman said.

"You can expect the prime minister to be very clear during her U.S. visit on the benefits of free trade and championing them and wanting to look at what more can be done to increase that," the spokeswoman told reporters on Monday.

Asked about the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers, which Trump has threatened to either scrap or change, the spokeswoman said: "Certainly we have been a strong supporter of the Iran deal, of securing that, and I would expect the prime minister to be clear on that during her visit to the U.S."

(Reporting by William James, Editing by Kylie MacLellan)

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to sign an executive order saying he intended to renegotiate the free trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico as early as Monday, NBC News reported, citing an unidentified White House official.

A group including former White House ethics attorneys will file a lawsuit on Monday accusing President Donald Trump of allowing his businesses to accept payments from foreign governments, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

WASHINGTON The White House vowed on Sunday to fight the news media "tooth and nail" over what it sees as unfair attacks, with a top adviser saying the Trump administration had presented "alternative facts" to counter low inauguration crowd estimates.

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UK's May to defend free trade and Iran deal in talks with Trump - Reuters