Connect with us

Regional

US and Iran to swap detainees after $6 billion unfrozen

Published

on

(Last Updated On: September 18, 2023)

A Qatari plane waited in Iran on Monday to fly out five U.S. detainees in a swap for five Iranians held in the United States, thanks to a Doha-mediated deal that has also unfrozen $6 billion of Iranian funds.

Iran and the United States were told the funds had been transferred to accounts in Qatar, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters. That triggered an exchange sequence agreed after months of talks between the arch foes, who are at odds over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and a host of other issues.

“A Qatari aircraft is on standby in Iran waiting to fly five soon-to-be released U.S. citizens and two relatives to Doha on Monday morning,” the source said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said the funds, blocked in South Korea after U.S. sanctions on Iran were hardened in 2018, would be available to Tehran on Monday. Under the deal, Qatar will ensure it is spent on humanitarian goods, Reuters reported.

There was no immediate public U.S. comment.

The five Americans with dual nationality are expected to fly on from Doha to the United States. In return, five Iranians detained in the U.S. will be released.

The Iranian Foreign ministry spokesperson said two Iranians would return to Iran while two would stay in the U.S. at their request. One detainee would join his family in a third country, he added.

The deal will remove a major irritant between the U.S., which brands Tehran a state sponsor of terrorism, and Iran, which calls Washington the “Great Satan”.

But they remain deeply divided on other issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear programme and its influence around the region to U.S. sanctions and America’s military presence in the Gulf.

Qatar, a tiny but hugely wealthy Gulf Arab energy producer, has sought to raise its global profile, hosting the soccer World Cup last year and carving out a role in international diplomacy. The Sunni Muslim nation hosts a big U.S. military base but has also forged close ties with Shi’ite Muslim Iran.

Doha hosted at least eight rounds of talks with Iranian and U.S. negotiators sitting in separate hotels, speaking via shuttle diplomacy, a source previously told Reuters.

Qatar’s monitoring role

Under the agreement, Doha agreed to monitor how Iran spends the unfrozen funds to ensure the cash is spent on humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine, and not any items under U.S. sanctions.

The transfer of Iran’s funds has drawn criticism from U.S. Republicans who say Biden, a Democrat, is in effect paying a ransom for U.S. citizens. The White House has defended the deal.

The U.S. dual citizens to be released include Siamak Namazi, 51, and Emad Sharqi, 59, both businessmen, and Morad Tahbaz, 67, an environmentalist who also holds British nationality. They were released from prison and put under house arrest last month, Reuters reported.

A fourth U.S. citizen was also released into house arrest, while a fifth was already under house arrest. Their identities have not been disclosed.

Iranian officials have named the five Iranians to be released by the U.S. as Mehrdad Moin-Ansari, Kambiz Attar-Kashani, Reza Sarhangpour-Kafrani, Amin Hassanzadeh and Kaveh Afrasiabi. Two Iranian officials previously said that Afrasiabi would remain in the United States but had not mentioned others.

Ties between Washington and Tehran have been boiling since Donald Trump, a Republican, pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal between Iran and global powers when he was president in 2018. Reaching another nuclear deal has gained little traction since, as President Joe Biden prepares for the 2024 U.S. election.

As a first step in the deal, Washington waived sanctions to allow the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian funds from South Korea to Qatar. The funds were blocked in South Korea, normally one of Iran’s largest oil customers, when Washington imposed sweeping financial sanctions on Tehran and the cash could not be transferred.

Regional

Suicide blast in southwest Pakistan kills at least 52 people

Published

on

(Last Updated On: September 29, 2023)

A suicide bombing in Pakistan killed at least 52 people and injured more than 50 on Friday at a religious gathering to mark the birthday of Prophet Mohammed in a restive province bordering Afghanistan, health officials and police said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts which come amid a surge in attacks by militant groups in Pakistan, raising the stakes for security forces ahead of national elections scheduled for January next year.

Hours after the suicide blast in Balochistan province, another blast ripped through a mosque in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which also borders Afghanistan, officials said, killing at least two people.

The mosque’s roof collapsed in the blast, local broadcaster Geo News reported, adding that about 30 to 40 people were trapped under the rubble.

Pakistan has seen a resurgence of attacks by Islamist militants since last year when a ceasefire broke down between the government and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella organisation of various hardline Sunni Islamist groups.

The TTP, which has carried out some of the bloodiest attacks inside Pakistan since its formation in 2007, denied that it had carried out Friday’s attack in Balochistan.

At least 58 people were wounded in the Balochistan blast, said Abdul Rasheed, a district health official, adding that the toll could rise as many people were in a serious condition.

Television footage of the attack’s aftermath showed hundreds of people helping the injured into ambulances.

“The bomber detonated himself near the vehicle of the Deputy Superintendent of Police,” Munir Ahmed, the deputy inspector general of police, told Reuters.

In July, more than 40 people were killed in a suicide bombing in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province at a religious political party’s gathering.

Continue Reading

Regional

Karabakh Armenians dissolve breakaway govt in capitulation to Azerbaijan

Published

on

(Last Updated On: September 28, 2023)

Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh said on Thursday they were dissolving the breakaway statelet they had defended for three decades, where more than half the population has fled since Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive last week.

In a statement, they said their self-declared Republic of Artsakh would “cease to exist” by Jan. 1, in what amounted to a formal capitulation to Azerbaijan.

For Azerbaijan and its president, Ilham Aliyev, the outcome is a triumphant restoration of sovereignty over an area that is internationally recognised as part of its territory but whose ethnic Armenian majority won de facto independence in a war in the 1990s, Reuters reported.

For Armenians, it is a defeat and a national tragedy.

Some 70,500 people had crossed into Armenia by early Thursday afternoon, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, out of an estimated population of 120,000.

“Analysis of the situation shows that in the coming days there will be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Interfax news agency quoted Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as saying. “This is an act of ethnic cleansing.”

Azerbaijan denies that accusation, saying it is not forcing people to leave and that it will peacefully reintegrate the Karabakh region and guarantee the civic rights of the ethnic Armenians.

Karabakh Armenians say they do not trust that promise, mindful of a long history of bloodshed between the two sides including two wars since the break-up of the Soviet Union. For days they have fled en masse down the snaking mountain road through Azerbaijan that connects Karabakh to Armenia.

Azerbaijan’s ambassador to London, Elin Suleymanov, told Reuters in an interview that Baku did not want a mass exodus from Karabakh and was not encouraging people to leave.

He said Azerbaijan had not yet had a chance to prove what he said was its sincere commitment to provide secure and better living conditions for those ethnic Armenians who choose to stay.

The Kremlin said on Thursday it was closely monitoring the humanitarian situation in Karabakh and said Russian peacekeepers in the region were providing assistance to residents. It said Russian President Vladimir Putin had no plans to visit Armenia.

Western governments have also expressed alarm over the humanitarian crisis and demanded access for international observers to monitor Azerbaijan’s treatment of the local population.

Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said this week she had heard “very troubling reports of violence against civilians”.

Azerbaijan said Aliyev had told her at a meeting on Wednesday that the rights of ethnic Armenians would be protected by law, like those of other minorities.

“The Azerbaijani president noted that the civilian population had not been harmed during the anti-terrorist measures, and only illegal Armenian armed formations and military facilities had been targeted,” a statement said.

Aliyev’s office said on Thursday he was visiting Jabrayil, a city on the southern edge of Karabakh that was destroyed by Armenian forces in the 1990s, which Azerbaijan recaptured in 2020 and is now rebuilding.

While saying he had no quarrel with ordinary Karabakh Armenians, Aliyev last week described their leaders as a “criminal junta” that would be brought to justice.

A former head of Karabakh’s government, Ruben Vardanyan, was arrested on Wednesday as he tried to cross into Armenia. Azerbaijan’s state security service said on Thursday he was being charged with financing terrorism and with illegally crossing the Azerbaijani border last year.

David Babayan, an adviser to the Karabakh leadership, said in a statement he was voluntarily giving himself up to the Azerbaijani authorities.

Mass displacements have been a feature of the Karabakh conflict since it broke out in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union headed towards collapse.

Between 1988 and 1994 about 500,000 Azerbaijanis from Karabakh and the areas around it were expelled from their homes, while the conflict prompted 350,000 Armenians to leave Azerbaijan and 186,000 Azerbaijanis to leave Armenia, according to “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War”, a 2003 book by Caucasus scholar and analyst Thomas de Waal.

Many of the Armenians escaping this week in heavily laden cars, trucks, buses and even tractors said they were hungry and fearful.

“This is one of the darkest pages of Armenian history,” said Father David, a 33-year-old Armenian priest who came to the border to provide spiritual support for those arriving. “The whole of Armenian history is full of hardships.”

Continue Reading

Regional

Powerful blast in Uzbek capital kills one, injures 162

Published

on

(Last Updated On: September 28, 2023)

One person was killed and 162 injured by a powerful explosion on Thursday at a warehouse near Tashkent’s airport that sparked a fire and shattered windows in apartment blocks nearby, authorities in Uzbekistan said.

A teenage boy died after a window frame fell on him, the health ministry said in a statement, adding that 24 people had been hospitalised, but faced no threat to their lives, while 138 were treated for injuries, Reuters reported.

Flights were operating as normal at the international airport in the capital, its administration said.

In video and photographs on social media, flames soared into the night sky, with a huge cloud of smoke hanging above the warehouse, but the cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.

A special laboratory had been set up at the scene to investigate the blast, the emergencies ministry said.

“As a result of the quick actions of emergencies ministry employees, the area of the fire is being reduced,” it added on the Telegram messaging app.

“The situation is completely under control.”

A social media post from Uzbek outlet Daryo said 16 fire and rescue crews were sent to fight the fire at one of the warehouses in the city’s Sergeli district near the airport.

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2022 Ariana News. All rights reserved!