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By Amir Vahdat and Jon Gambrell, TheAssociated Press

TEHRAN, Iran A historic high-rise building in the heart of Irans capital caught fire and later collapsed Thursday, killing at least 30 firefighters and leaving their stunned colleagues and bystanders weeping in the streets.

The disaster at the 17-story Plasco building, inadvertently shown live on state television, came after authorities said they repeatedly warned tenants about blocking stairwells with fabric from cramped garment workshops on its upper floors.

Firefighters, soldiers and other emergency responders dug through the debris into the night, looking for survivors. While it was not clear how many people were in the steel-and-concrete building, witnesses said many had slipped through a police cordon while the fire burned to go back inside for their belongings.

They asked us using loudspeakers to evacuate the building, but some people went inside again, saying their precious documents, their bank checks, their entire life was in their shops, said witness Masoud Hosseini. They went inside to fetch those documents. I felt like they cared about their belongings, checks and money more than their lives.

Firefighters went inside to bring them out, and then suddenly the building collapsed, Hosseini said.

Iranian authorities did not immediately release definitive casualty figures, which is common in unfolding disasters.

Irans state-run Press TV announced the firefighters deaths, without giving a source for the information. Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said more than 20 bodies of firefighters had been recovered by Thursday night.

Local state television said 30 civilians were injured, while the state-run IRNA news agency said 45 firefighters had been injured.

Firefighters began battling the blaze around 8 a.m., some 3 1/2 hours before the collapse. The fire appeared to be the most intense on the upper floors, the site of workshops where tailors cooked for themselves and used old kerosene heaters for warmth.

The building came down in seconds, shown live on state television , which had begun an interview with a journalist at the scene. One side collapsed first, tumbling perilously close to a firefighter perched on a ladder and spraying water on the blaze.

A thick plume of brown smoke rose over the site afterward, and onlookers wailed in grief.

God willing, nothing happened to firefighters who were there, the journalist said, then began crying.

Watching the disaster unfold was Masoumeh Kazemi, who said she rushed to the building because her two sons and a brother worked in the garment workshops on the upper floors.

I do not know where they are now, Kazemi said, crying.

In a nearby intersection, Abbas Nikkhoo stood with tears in his eyes.

My nephew was working in a workshop there, he said. He has been living with me since moving to Tehran last year from the north of the country in hopes of finding a job.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed sorrow over the fire in a statement and praised the courage and sacrifice of the firefighters.

President Hassan Rouhani ordered Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli to investigate the disaster, IRNA reported. Rouhani also ordered the ministry to ensure the injured were cared for and immediately compensate those affected by the disaster. Rouhani, whose administration struck the nuclear deal with world powers, will probably be standing for re-election in May.

The cause of the blaze wasnt immediately known. However, fire department spokesman Jalal Maleki said authorities had visited the building often to warn tenants about conditions there.

Everyone stacked up goods outside their shops and in the staircases and corridors, Maleki said. We warned them many times, but they wouldnt listen.

In the hours after the collapse, authorities also described the building as having a weak structure, without elaborating.

Another fire broke out later Thursday at a building next to the collapsed tower, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. Firefighters worked into the night to extinguish it.

The Plasco building was an iconic presence on Tehrans skyline, one of the first to rise against the backdrop of the snowcapped Mount Damavand. Opened in 1962, it was the first privately owned tower to be built during the era of the U.S.-backed shah, when oil money fueled the capitals rapid development.

The tower, the tallest in Tehran at the time and just north of the sprawling Grand Bazaar, got its name from the plastics manufacturing company owned by its builder, Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the shah, Irans new clerical rulers had Elghanian tried on charges that included spying for Israel. He was executed by firing squad an outcome that prompted many of the remaining members of the countrys longstanding Jewish community to flee.

The state-controlled Islamic Revolution Mostazafan Foundation took ownership of the building. The foundation, which has ties to the powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, made no immediate statement about the collapse.

The fire was the worst in Tehran since a 2005 blaze at a historic mosque killed 59 worshippers and injured nearly 200 others.

Thursdays disaster stunned the city. Firefighters openly wept on the streets, holding each other for support. Dozens of people lined up to donate blood.

It is a humanitarian duty, said Gholamreza Heidari, a university student. It is nothing compared to the dedication that our firefighters showed in rescuing people.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Adam Schreck in Dubai and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed.

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Iran shocked by deadly fire, collapse of Tehran high-rise The Denver Post

MADRID It is unfortunate that so few international agreements have been reached in recent years. During a period when great-power competition has generally trumped cooperation, two significant exceptions the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement offer hope that formalized, multilateral responses to global challenges are still possible.

But now Donald Trump is threatening to renege on both agreements, and his election as President of the United States has revealed their fragility. If the US withdraws from, or fails to comply with, either deal, it will strike a heavy blow to a global-governance system that relies on multilateral agreements to resolve international problems.

To see what is at stake, consider the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the E3/EU3+3 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany and the European Union). The JCPOAs first anniversary coincided with Trumps inauguration, so it is worth recalling how it came about and what could happen if it falls apart.

Europeans first made contact with Iran about the issue back in 2003, when they negotiated with then-Secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, Hassan Rouhani. Both sides even reached an agreement in 2004; but it did not last long. In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejads election as President of Iran marked a turning point. While the negotiations officially continued, scant progress was made. Meanwhile, Irans nuclear program advanced rapidly, even as its people suffered under heavy economic sanctions.

Rouhani won Irans presidential election in 2013. When he had negotiated with European diplomats in 2003, Iran had a modest nuclear program, and could enrich uranium only with great difficulty. Ten years later, it had installed thousands of centrifuges. Fortunately, tireless diplomatic efforts during the two years following Rouhanis election culminated in the JCPOA.

Of course, there were vocal critics in the US who did not welcome the agreement, or the prospect of negotiating with Iran at all. And other countries in the Middle East feared that the agreement would alter the regional balance of power and damage their own interests. Opponents of the deal offered three main reasons for rejecting it: Iran could never be trusted to fulfill its commitments; the agreement would unacceptably elevate Irans regional status; and Iran did not deserve the time of day.

In the year since the JCPOA was implemented, has Iran fulfilled its commitments? The International Atomic Energy Agency says that it has. Iran has allowed the IAEA to inspect every site that the agency has requested to see including those from which it was barred before the agreement and has granted inspectors access to its electronic systems and chain of enrichment.

The IAEA insists that no country has ever been more closely monitored. As the International Crisis Group points out, Trump is the first US president in more than two decades who enters office not needing to worry about Iran crossing the threshold to nuclear weaponization undetected.

To be sure, many of us had hoped that the agreement would noticeably improve Irans relations with its neighbors and the US, and that has not happened. The agreement created a diplomatic window to stabilize the region, but that opportunity was squandered. The wars in Syria and Yemen have continued, rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran seems unlikely any time soon, and Russia is visibly asserting itself in the region.

But the blame does not rest with the JCPOA, which was negotiated as a delimited non-proliferation agreement. Taking regional diplomacy any further at that time would have been impossible. But, given the new period of uncertainty under Trump, the European negotiating parties should now assume responsibility for maintaining the JCPOA, and they should urgently propose an initiative to increase stability in the region.

Russia and Turkey convened a meeting in Kazakhstan this month for Syrian rebel groups and the Syrian government to begin peace talks. This effort should be expanded to include other parties, and be used as a first step toward building regional trust. All stakeholders will benefit from putting their energy into peacemaking instead of attacking the Iran agreement.

It is chilling to imagine the current situation without the JCPOA. Troubled Saudi Arabia would like to end its military intervention in Yemen, but that is no easy feat. Iran is commencing a presidential election campaign, while reeling from the death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and one of the architects of the Islamic Republic. Turkey is seeking an outcome to the Syrian conflict that aligns with its own policy toward the Kurds. Russia needs to withdraw its troops from Syria an intervention that has been bleeding its economy. And the EU still needs to resolve the refugee crisis, in a context of regional stability.

Trump should think seriously about Americas interests, and those of the region. If he does, he will realize that the alternative to contributing to regional stability is to risk an even greater nightmare.

Get to grips with President Trump; Project Syndicate has published more than 100 articles exploring the implications of his presidency for politics, the economy, and world peace and security. They are all here:

Link:
Trump, Iran, and Stability in the Middle East - Project Syndicate

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