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January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and this year's commemoration came at an especially grim time for Jews in the United States and all across the world.

Americans reacted in horror just two weeks prior as an Islamist terrorist took the rabbi and three congregants hostage at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. Apparently a believer in conspiracy theories of Jewish control of the U.S. government, Malik Faisal Akram demanded that the rabbi help gain the release of Aafia Siddiqui, currently serving an 86-year sentence in a nearby Texas prison for the attempted murder of a U.S. Army officer. The Biden administration released a statement in the aftermath declaring it would "stand against antisemitism." But absent a major course correction in the Biden administration's foreign policy, Jews are poised to be held hostage by terrorists on a scale far greater than they were in Texas. Those are the stakes for Israel if Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of antisemitism, acquires a nuclear weapon.

The Biden administration has spent the past year negotiating with Iran via European intermediaries about a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal. Though reports suggest that the two sides are still quite far apart, there's no doubt that the administration is eager to reenter the flawed accord. And Iran is leveraging the administration's enthusiasm for rejoining the deal to extract as many concessions as possible; for instance, the mullahs are trying to secure a promise that the U.S. will never abandon the deal and reimpose sanctions in the future, if both sides now come back into compliance.

But Iran's leaders are careful observers of American politics, and they know such a commitment could not hold in a future Republican administration. So, all such a "promise" would amount to is a useful pretext for Iran to walk away in the future. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic has enriched uranium at a 60% level, and claims to be able to enrich at a 90% levelthe threshold for a nuclear bomb.

Regardless of whether the Biden administration secures a new deal, don't expect Iran to abide by it anyway. In 2018, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu definitively exposed how Iran had continued to maintain a secret nuclear weapons program forbidden under the terms of the 2015 deal, when he showed the world a trove of documents Israeli agents had procured during a raid. Current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett used his United Nations General Assembly speech last fall to claim Iran is continuing nuclear activity at secret sites in Turquzabad, Tehran and Marivan.

The existential danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon for Israel is obvious. Even short of a nightmare scenario of Iran using a nuke against Israel, Tehran's mere possession of one could very well trigger a catastrophic regional conflict. Bennett also said in his UN address, "Words do not stop centrifuges from spinning." A pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iranian facilities could very well instigate new rocket onslaughts on Israeli targets from the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah in numbers far greater than Hamas' barrages last May.

But what really fuels Israeli alarm over Iran's nuclear program is the regime's vicious antisemitism, which the current crop of leaders will assuredly continue to propagate. Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Mohsen Rezaee, now vice president for economic affairs and formerly the chief of Iran's murderous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, helped kill 85 and injure 300-plus in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Mutual Israelite Association, a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The regime is also willing to blackmail Israel using the treatment of Iran's Jews as a bargaining chip. Rezaee has reportedly said, "The Israeli government knows very well that if it makes a mistake, the regime will treat the 10,000 Jews living in Iran differently." All of this is on top of the regime's now-customary genocidal threats: In 2020, the ayatollah called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that "will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed."

In 1979, at the age of six, I fled Iran with my family after the regime executed the leader of the country's Jewish community and my father was threatened with denunciation as a "Zionist" spy. What I fear most is that the regime's longtime mantra of "Death to Israel"which has become pass to Western elites' earsis not just a slogan, after all.

Seventy-seven years after the end of World War II, the U.S. retains a moral obligation to deny the one country in the world that threatens genocide against Jews the means to carry out that threat. The only way to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon is to stop financial concessions, build on the campaign of crippling economic pressure the Trump administration inaugurated, continue the covert activities (likely Israeli-led) that have dealt setbacks to Iran's nuclear march and establish a military deterrence posture that makes clear the intolerable costs the United States and Israel will impose on the regime if it ever does acquire a nuclear weapon.

This year, the Biden administration once again said "Never Again" on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. A tougher approach to Iran would put some teeth into those words.

Ellie Cohanim is a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum and is the former U.S. deputy special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism at the U.S. Department of State. Follow her on Twitter: @EllieCohanim.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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Want 'Never Again' To Mean Something? Stop Iran's March to the Bomb | Opinion - Newsweek

TEHRAN Iran's decision to produce centrifuge parts in a new complex in Isfahan instead of the Tesa complex in Karaj is done with the knowledge of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and now the UN nuclear watchdog would be able to adjust its regulatory and monitoring standards accordingly, Irans acting ambassador to the IAEA said late on Monday.

The IAEA report is a regular update which provides the latest technical information on Iran's nuclear activities to its members," Mohammad Reza Ghaebi explained.

He continued by saying that according to the report, Iran has informed the Agency that it intends to produce centrifuge parts in a new complex in Isfahan instead of the Tesa complex, which has not yet begun its work, and the IAEA will be able to meet regulatory standards.

However, information about this monitoring will remain with Iran and the IAEA will not have access to it until Iran resumes its nuclear obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he explained.

Iran has informed the IAEA it has stopped production at one of its nuclear facilities attacked last June and transferred work to another site, the watchdog said on Monday.

The move responded to a "security concern" following the attack, with the new site "better protected", a European diplomat told AFP.

The Tesa complex in Karaj near the capital Tehran hosted a workshop to build components for centrifuges, machines used to enrich uranium.

Iran said cameras at the site were damaged on June 23, 2021 during what it called an Israeli "sabotage" operation.

In the aftermath, the IAEA said it did not receive permission to gain access and replace the surveillance equipment damaged in the attack.

The two parties finally struck an agreement in December and new cameras were installed.

However, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said "Iran had informed the Agency on 19 January that it intended to produce centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows at a new location in Isfahan," according to the UN watchdog.

It said, "the Agency could adjust its surveillance and monitoring measures accordingly."

"A few days later, Agency inspectors applied seals on all the relevant machines in the Karaj workshop, placed them under containment and then removed the surveillance cameras installed there," it said.

"As a result, the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows at the Karaj workshop had ceased," it added.

Then on January 24 IAEA inspectors set up cameras at a site in Isfahan "to ensure the machines intended for the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows were under monitoring," it said.

It added that the production of the centrifuge equipment at the new workshop had yet to begin.

Continue reading here:
Iran: IAEA informed about moving centrifuge parts to Isfahan - Tehran Times

TEHRAN Iranian police have recently recovered a number of historical relics from an antique dealer who was illegally keeping them in his place in Dashtestan, the southwestern province of Bushehr.

The police discovered the relics after cultural heritage aficionados informed authorities of the unlawful activity of an antique dealer, IRNA quoted a senior police official in charge of protecting cultural heritage on Wednesday.

The relics, which include some copper vessels and utensils, are estimated to date back to the Qajar-era (1789-1925) and even before, Abdolhamid Haqqani said.

The suspect has been surrendered to the judicial system for further investigation, the official added.

With over 6,000 years of history and significant monuments from the Elamite, Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid eras, Bushehr is one of Irans most important historical centers.

Besides its cultural heritage, beautiful beaches and lush palm groves make it an attractive destination for world travelers.

The historical and architectural monuments of Bushehr include Islamic buildings like mosques and praying centers, mansions, old towers, castles, as well as gardens.

When it comes to cultural attractions, there are many historical mounds in Bushehr including Tall-e Khandaq with Sassanid architectural style, Tall-e Marv located near an Achaemenid Palace, and Qajar era Malek al-Tojar Mansion. Qajar era Kazeruni Mansion, which has been inscribed on the World Heritage List, is another attraction that world travelers love to see among various ancient sites.

ABU/AFM

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Historical relics recovered in southwest Iran - Tehran Times

On 2 February, 1971, representatives from 18 countries gathered in Iran's northern coastal town of Ramsar, nestled between the majestic Alborz Mountains and the Caspian Sea, to sign a landmark treaty aimed at preserving the world's wetlands, Anadolu News Agency reports.

What came to be known as the Ramsar Convention, the first-of-its-kind environmental agreement sought to engage governments in tackling pressing issues related to wetlands, committing to their "wise use," and cooperating on trans-boundary wetlands and species.

The agreement, which came into force in 1975, now has now 171 countries as parties a worldwide network of wetland managers.

Massoud Ghorbani, a Tehran-based environmental activist, said the agreement played a pivotal role in attracting the world's attention to wetlands, but failed to achieve all of its objectives.

"Half a century after the agreement was adopted," he told Anadolu Agency that "the world has recognised the importance of wetlands in sustainable development, climate change and disaster management, but it's also true that wetlands continue to vanish, posing a serious threat to biodiversity."

According to the 2021 Global Wetland Outlook report, almost 64 per cent of the world's wetlands have vanished since 1900, with 35 per cent of wetland habitat losses taking place since 1970.

Iran, which played a key role in the adoption of the first modern agreement on global wetlands conservation, has been grappling with a series of challenges to preserve and protect its wetlands, many of which are already on the brink of extinction.

The country is known to have 141 wetlands spread across 3 million hectares, of which 25 major wetlands have been registered in the Ramsar Convention, covering an area of over 1.4 million hectares.

"Of the 25 Iranian wetlands in the Ramsar Convention, almost one-third are drying out due to environmental degradation, drought, pollution, climate change, coastal erosion and other adverse environmental factors," Ghorbani asserted, urging immediate action.

Last month, the release of water from the Kamal Khan Dam in Afghanistan's Nimruz province spread cheers in Iran's border province of Sistan-Baluchistan, home to the Hamoun wetland.

The 5,660-square-kilometer (2,185-square-mile) area, which gave birth to Zoroastrianism and served as the setting for Persian poet Ferdowsi's epic book "Shahnameh", has degraded over time, threatening the lives and livelihoods of people in the border province.

According to environmental experts, severe drought and poor water management have turned the world-famous Hamoun wetland into an ecological disaster.

"The restricted flow of water from the Hirmand River, which feeds the Hamoun wetland has, over the years, turned the wetland into a wasteland," Hashemi Shafaghi, a journalist and activist from Sistan, told Anadolu Agency, blaming it on the construction of dams in neighbouring Afghanistan as well as mismanagement of water resources in Iran.

"Hamoun wetland has been a lifeline of locals for centuries, and now it has become a source of the misery," Shafaghi asserted, adding that the drought has forced thousands of people to migrate.

The fast vanishing wetlands point to a growing water crisis in the country which, in recent years, has fuelled anger and discontent. Annual rainfall has plummeted to about 200 mm, or almost one-third of the global average, with the majority of provinces battered by arid conditions.

READ: Iran welcomes Taliban's move to release water

An official with the Department of Environment told Anadolu Agency that two-thirds of wetlands in Iran are "on the brink of disaster."

"Twenty years ago, wetlands in Iran were thriving with life and economic prosperity now, they are increasingly contributing to death, diseases and economic crisis," he said, asking to remain anonymous as he is not authorised to talk to the media.

In the Gavkhouni wetland near the central provinces of Isfahan and Yazd, migratory birds such as flamingos, sea sparrows and wild ducks returned a few years ago following heavy rainfall, but they disappeared again with the return of arid conditions.

The central provinces have seen mass protests recently against the growing water crisis. Tens of thousands of people took over the dried Zayendeh Rud River in Isfahan, drawing the attention of top government functionaries.

"Vanishing of wetlands and rivers is a cause of serious concern, which necessitates proper water management strategies based on scientific planning," Farshad Rezvani, an environmentalist from Isfahan who participated in recent protests, said.

"If it continues, we may see larger protests in the future, because water is the lifeline."

Some wetlands, like Jazmourian in the south-eastern Kerman province, have lately shown signs of revival after being dormant for many decades due to heavy rains.

The only source of water in Iran's largest province, the Jazmourian wetland, was hit by severe drought for years due to climate change, construction of dams, soaring temperature and exhaustion of groundwater resources, according to experts.

In the southern Fars province, local environmental revivalists have been engaged in efforts to bring the Kamjan wetland back to life, helped by a grant from the UN Development Program (UNDP).

The efforts won them the Energy Globe Award from an Austrian environmental body last month.

The project, according to environmentalists, is aimed at reviving the dying wetland as well as training people in preventing over-exploitation of water resources.

"Agricultural development activities in the mid-1980s caused the wetland to dry out, which harmed the local biodiversity," said Kouroush Namdari, an environmental researcher who worked on the Kamjan wetland.

Some years ago, there were also concerns about the vanishing of the Hoor al Azam wetland in the oil-rich south-western Khuzestan province, after more than 60,000 hectares of the internationally reputed wetland had dried up due to industrial activities and plans for oil exploration.

READ: Iran and Afghanistan sign water deal after decades-old dispute

The plan was later shelved after protests from locals and environmental activists.

Meanwhile, an official with the Department of Environment said a plan is on the anvil designed to preserve and protect 25 wetlands in Iran that have been registered with the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.

The plan was floated last year by the Energy Ministry in the previous administration and discussions have continued, the official told Anadolu Agency.

The plan, he stressed, seeks to "prevent illegal stealing of water" from rivers and restore water supply to wetlands in order to help them revive and allow migratory birds to return to their natural habitat.

Apart from that, a "robust disaster management strategy" is also being considered to "mitigate the impact of natural disasters" that have led to the depletion of the country's water resources.

"It is a long-term plan that requires the cooperation of people, environmentalists and the government," he said. "For now, we can only hope for the best and prepare for the worst."

More here:
Iran races against time to revive vanishing wetlands - Middle East Monitor

White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk says the U.S. and Iran "are in the ballpark of a possible deal" to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, but he doesnt want to put odds on it."

Why it matters: That's the most optimistic statement from the Biden administration since the nuclear talks resumed in Vienna last December. McGurk, who was speaking at a Carnegie Endowment event, didnt explain the reasoning behind his assessment.

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State of play: Biden administration officials have set the end of January or beginning of February as an unofficial deadline for the talks, in large part because they believe Iran's nuclear advances will soon render the 2015 deal ineffective.

Both U.S. and European officials have said in recent weeks that progress in Vienna has been modest and very slow.

A senior U.S. official involved in the talks told Axios last week that Iran would have to move faster on its diplomacy or slower on its nuclear program to provide enough space for a deal.

What he is saying: McGurk said the talks are close to a culmination point and the U.S. will soon know if Iran is ready to return to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal on terms Washington can accept.

Despite his relative optimism, McGurk said the U.S. was prepared for the possibility that the talks would collapse without a deal.

He also said the Biden administration remains focused on restoring the 2015 accord and is not interested in a less for less interim deal.

Go deeper: U.S. and Israel hold Iran strategy session on nuclear deal decision

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U.S. and Iran "in the ballpark" of a nuclear deal, Biden ...