An Iranian ship carrying 60 Iranian activists was being prepared to sail to Gaza via the Caspian Sea, but Secretary General of International Conference on Support for Palestinian Antifada, Hossein Sheikholeslam, announced that the ‘Iranian Flotilla’ has been cancelled. IRNA reports that the aid ship was first scheduled to leave for Gaza on June 24, but Israeli restrictions caused it to be postponed to Sunday June 27. However, currently the whole trip has been cancelled.
Israeli officials have announced that all ships going to Gaza will be inspected by Israeli ships. The Israeli Prime Minister stressed that "Gaza should not be turned into an Iranian port." Hossein Sheikholeslam said that "Israel has sent a letter to the UN saying that the presence of Lebanese and Iranian ships in the Gaza region are marks of war with their regime and they will confront it."
Israel contends that inspection of ships to Gaza is necessary in order to stop weapons from reaching the armed forces in Gaza. Sheikholeslam maintained that "Israel has politicized the issue of getting aid to the people in siege in Gaza and we do not want our humanitarian efforts to be politicized." He added that Iran will make every effort to send its humanitarian aid to Gaza through other means.
Israeli commandos attacked an aid flotilla to Gaza a few weeks ago, which led to ten deaths and scores of injuries. The majority of the victims were Turkish citizens.
Iran planned to assist the aid efforts to Gaza but Greta Berlin, one of the organizers of aid efforts for Gaza, rejected their assistance saying their organization does not accept aid from extremists groups and countries. Iran's Revolutionary Guards have also announced that they are ready to escort humanitarian aid vessels to Gaza. source: Radio Zamaneh
The mothers of three American hikers held in Iran on suspicion of espionage said Thursday they hope a report that their children were arrested on the Iraqi side of the border will help lead to their release. Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal were arrested on July 31 during what their families have said was a simple hiking trip along the Iraq-Iran border. They have said if the hikers crossed into Iran it was an accident.
The Nation reported Thursday that two witnesses from a Kurdish village near the border say the Americans were on Iraqi territory when they were arrested by Iranian forces. The publication said the witnesses wouldn’t allow their names to be used because they feared retaliation from Iran.
“We have to focus and assimilate this, but it’s shocking,” Nora Shourd, Sarah’s mother, said in an interview Thursday on CNN. “It’s shocking it hasn’t come out in the public, that it happened to these kids, and that this is the reason they’re being held.” In an earlier interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Shourd said the report “kind of highlights the whole thing we’ve been saying all along, which is why they’re being held so long? … All the justification that’s come out of Iran doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.” Bauer’s mother, Cindy Hickey, told CNN the story “kind of terrifies me.” Bauer had worked as a freelancer journalist, and wrote at least one piece on Iraq for The Nation, but the publication has said he wasn’t on assignment for them at the time of his arrest. The magazine said its story was based on a five-month investigation. It described its witnesses as from Zalem, a few miles from the Iran border.
A senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case and ongoing diplomatic efforts to free the hikers, said the department was unable to corroborate The Nation’s report. The hikers’ mothers have grown increasingly frustrated since traveling to Iran in May to meet with their children, who were being held at Evin Prison in Tehran. Earlier this month, they demanded that Iran release the hikers or put them on trial, and said they were being used as pawns in a standoff with the U.S. Iran’s top human rights official said recently that the three would probably go on trial soon if prosecutors decide they have enough evidence.
Fattal, 28, is from Pennsylvania. Shourd, 31, is from California and Bauer, 27, from Minnesota. All three are graduates of the University of California at Berkeley. source: AP, IranFocus
The American Congress on Thursday overwhelmingly passed tough new sanctions against Iran, sending a message to Iran that becoming a nuclear power could be accompanied by a high economic price. The Senate vote was 99-0. The House vote was 408-8.
The Senate and House in quick succession approved the penalties that focus on Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps and the country’s imports of gas and other refined energy products. The sanctions bill now goes to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the legislation, coming after a year in which the Obama administration’s direct diplomacy efforts were largely rebuffed by Iran, represented “the most powerful sanctions ever imposed by the Congress on the government of Iran.” Foreign companies will be given a choice, McCain said. “Do you want to do business with Iran, or do you want to do business with the United States?” One provision added in final House-Senate negotiations specifies that foreign banks interacting with the Revolutionary Guard or certain Iranian banks will be shut out of the US financial system. Lawmakers from both parties stressed that the bill will be ineffective if the Obama administration, like past administrations, chooses not to punish violators in order to avoid confrontations with other countries. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the top Senate negotiator on the bill, acknowledged the weak response of past presidents, but he said the new bill, while still containing waiver provisions, states “in no uncertain terms” that the president must investigate if there is credible evidence of a violation and ultimately impose sanctions.
Fariborz Ghadar, a scholar and Iran expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he didn’t think the new penalties would have a substantial economic impact. He said Iran’s oil industry has already been hit by restrictions on direct investment and that Iran, in anticipation of sanctions on gas sales, has taken steps to reduce domestic consumption and cut dependence on gas imports from 40 percent of total use to less than 30 percent. source: The Washington Post | |
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