TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has resumed enriching uranium up to 20 percent in the country’s biggest breach yet of its landmark nuclear deal with world powers, a government spokesperson told state-run Mehr News on Monday.
Also Monday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seized a South Korean-flagged ship carrying thousands of tons of ethanol in the Persian Gulf, according to the state-linked news agencies IRIB and FARS News.
Raising enrichment puts Iran a technical step away from enriching at 90 percent, the level needed to produce a nuclear warhead. Before the announcement, Iran was enriching uranium at around 4.5 percent, in violation of the nuclear pact but at a significantly lower level.
Tensions between the United States and Iran have been simmering in the last days of President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, setting off a series of escalating incidents that culminated in the killing of a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2020. Thousands of people took to the streets in Iraq to protest his death Sunday.
Iranian officials said the uranium is being enriched at the Fordo nuclear facility, which is hidden deep inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom. Under the terms of the nuclear deal, Tehran is allowed to enrich uranium at only around 3.5 percent, and no enrichment is allowed at the Fordo plant.
The deal stipulates that in exchange for agreeing to limit its uranium enrichment, world powers would grant Iran sanctions relief.
Since the U.S. pulled out of the pact in May 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions, Tehran has steadily breached its commitments, prompting alarm among the five other parties to the deal: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia and China…..
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Iran goes to Interpol for arrest of Donald Trump and 47 others for killing Qasem Soleimani
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/01/iran-goes-to-interpol-for-arrest-of-donald-trump-and-47-others-for-killing-qasem-soleimani;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Iran’s grieving and rage over Soleimani’s killing does not stop at its Interpol request. Iran’s judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi has also issued a warning that Qasem Soleimani’s killers will “not be safe on Earth.”
Soleimani was commander of Iran’s Quds force. His successor, Esmail Qaani, warned that “severe revenge awaits” and that it may come from anywhere.
According to a transcript from the Council on Foreign Relations, Soleimani was a critical religious Shia figure. Islamic apologist and Iran analyst Vali Nasr stated this about Soleimani’s significance to Iran:
So in many ways he became, if you would, the field commander for the Shia resistance to what they thought was a major Sunni push under the title of the Caliphate and ISIS to essentially take over Iraq, take over Syria, and destroy, if you would, Shia cultural religious monuments and heritage in the region.
Hamas has also hailed Soleimani, erecting billboards in Gaza and declaring:
The martyr commander Soleimani, who devoted his life to supporting the resistance, is a martyr of Jerusalem.
“Iran asks Interpol to help arrest Trump and 47 other US officials over 2020 killing of General Soleimani – judiciary spokesman,” RT, January 5, 2021:
Iran has requested that Interpol issue a ‘Red Notice’ for Donald Trump and 47 other officials, over their “role” in the assassination of Qassem Soleimani last January, said judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Esmaeili.
“The request to issue a ‘Red Notice’ for 48 people involved in the assassination of Martyr Soleimani, including the US President, as well as commanders and officials at the Pentagon, and forces in the region, was handed over to Interpol,” said Esmaeili at a press conference in Tehran on Tuesday. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is very seriously following up on pursuing and punishing those who ordered and executed this crime,” he added.
According to the International Criminal Police Organization, its ‘Red Notice’ is a “request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.” Interpol notes that it is not an arrest warrant.
Iranian Minister of Intelligence Mahmoud Alavi also spoke on the issue on Tuesday, saying that Iran had prepared 1,000 pages of documents to refer to the International Criminal Court to prove that state terrorism had been used against General Soleimani. He also pledged “tough revenge at the proper time.”
Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020, while visiting Baghdad. Agnes Callamard, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, described the assassination as “unlawful” and a “nail in the coffin of international law,” when she took to Twitter on the anniversary of the assassination.
Iran already requested Interpol’s help in arresting Donald Trump and 35 other officials on “murder and terrorism charges” in June last year. However, Interpol rejected the request, citing its constitution as prohibiting it from undertaking “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial character.”
Senior Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, have repeatedly pledged to avenge the assassination of General Soleimani….
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NYC: Air traffic controllers told ‘We are flying a plane into the Capitol on Wednesday. Soleimani will be avenged.’
BY ROBERT SPENCER
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/01/nyc-air-traffic-controllers-told-we-are-flying-a-plane-into-the-capitol-on-wednesday-soleimani-will-be-avenged;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
“Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies…” (8:60)
“Chilling threat sent to air traffic controllers vowing revenge for killing of Iranian general is under investigation,” by Jeff Pegues, CBS News, January 6, 2021:
Multiple air traffic controllers in New York heard a chilling threat Monday in audio obtained exclusively by CBS News: “We are flying a plane into the Capitol on Wednesday. Soleimani will be avenged.”
The threat refers to Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed last year in a U.S. drone strike ordered by President Trump. It was made on the one-year anniversary of Soleimani’s death, for which Iranian officials have long vowed revenge.
It’s unclear who sent the threat. While the government does not believe the warning of an attack is credible, it is being investigated as a breach of aviation frequencies, CBS News has learned.
Sources told CBS News that the Pentagon and other agencies were briefed Tuesday about the digitized voice recording. The sources said they believe the threat was designed to suggest hitting the Capitol on the same day Congress is set to count the Electoral College results….
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Emboldened Iran’s parliament approves mandate ‘to destroy the usurping Zionist regime’
BY ROBERT SPENCER
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/01/emboldened-irans-parliament-approves-
mandate-to-destroy-the-usurping-zionist-regime;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Biden will soon be president and the jihad can resume as before.
“Iran Parliament Votes on Official Mandate to Destroy Israel,” Foreign Policy, January 4, 2021 (thanks to Henry):
Iran’s parliament voted on a mandate to destroy the state of Israel Sunday, the anniversary of Qassem Soleimani’s assassination.
The mandate aims “to destroy the usurping Zionist regime” and “[break] the siege of Gaza by sending basic goods from official naval bases to Gaza in exchange for money or free of charge.”
Upon passage of the mandate into law, the Iranian regime will be obligated to pursue the “Right of return of Palestinian refugees” and the “Liberation of the Golan Heights” by providing “welfare-economic-security and infrastructures.”
The mandate also designates the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani as a “terrorist act” that warrants the “execution of severe revenge by expelling the United States from the region and reciprocal measures to weaken the United States.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has previously referred to Israel as a “deadly, cancerous tumor in the region” that must be “uprooted and destroyed.”
Iran openly bolsters terrorist groups in Gaza including Hamas and Hezbollah by supplying millions of dollars annually in financial and military support.
In May 2020, Khamenei confirmed this weapons transfer.
“Iran realized Palestinian fighters’ only problem was lack of access to weapons. With divine guidance and assistance, we planned, and the balance of power has been transformed in Palestine, and today the Gaza Strip can stand against the aggression of the Zionist enemy and defeat it,” said Khamenei….
