Mediaboss Marketing

Is Iran marching towards an ICBM? On June 15th, the Islamic Republic of Iran acknowledged its plans to conduct a test launch of its new solid-fueled rocket in the near future. One day prior, satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies depicted a rocket positioned on a desert launch pad that has been used by the regime to launch tests in the past.

While Irans Defense Ministry announced these plans on Wednesday, the government did not admit to this imminent test launch initially. A spokesperson with Irans Defense Ministry described the countrys test launch last year as successful, yet the history of Irans space program is unquestionably riddled with failures. Despite the outcome of Irans approaching test launch, the regime is sending a message to its adversaries including the United States. By carrying out the test, the regime is defying a United Nations resolution that restricts Irans ballistic missile development. As tensions between Iran, the U.S., and its regional adversaries have increased in recent months, the regimes test launch could be considered an escalation.

Launch Sites Redied, But Are They Reliable?

According to Iranian state news sources, two test launches of the Zuljanah solid-fuel satellite carrier rocket are planned for the imminent future. The rocket is equipped with a 200-kilogram payload, a sufficient amount needed for a nuclear warhead. While Irans spokesperson claimed an initial test of the rocket was deemed successful by Iran, satellite imagery suggests otherwise.

In late February, the Associated Press reported that Iran likely experienced a testing failure of its Zulijanah rocket. Images captured of the launch pad depicted a damaged surface and debris. In 2019, a mysterious rocket explosion at the Iman Khomeini Space Center destroyed and killed researchers.

Failure to Launch Successfully

While Iran has suffered from several failures in its space department over the last decade, the regime has maintained its commitment to carry out successful launches. In April 2020, Tehran launched its first successful military satellite. The Noor-1 light was carried by an indigenously made Qased three-stage space launch vehicle (SLV). This successful launch was extremely significant as it marked the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) first success in its new military space program. Additionally, the solid-fuel capability would make Irans ballistic missile designs more sophisticated when applied to these weapons in the future.

Irans latest test launch comes just one day after an Iranian scientist was mysteriously killed on a mission. Over the last year, a series of assassinations and sketchy deaths have plagued top Iranian officials. Israel has claimed responsibility for the targeted killing of Sayad Khodayee in May, according to the New York Times.

The IRGC officer was allegedly the leader of a small task force tasked with kidnapping Israelis and other foreigners around the world. The killing of Iranian scientists may also be perpetuated by the Jewish state, as it undoubtedly sets back the regimes progress on the nuclear front. Israels Begin Doctrine instructs the country to preemptively act to ensure that its adversaries do not obtain nuclear capabilities.

Irans ICBM Dreams

Irans latest test launch indicates the country could be seeking the launch capabilities needed to perform a successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). However, the regime will first have to perfect the reentry of its satellites and warhead targeting to make this threat more formidable.

Maya Carlinis a Middle East Defense Editor with 19FortyFive. She is also an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel.

See more here:
Is Iran On the Brink of Building an ICBM? - 19FortyFive

According to the statistics released by Turkiyes Statistics Office, Irans trade exchanges with Turkiye in the first four months of the current year registered a 38% hike.

The two countries of Iran and Turkiye exchanged $2.175 billion worth of products in that period.

Statistics showed that Iran and Turkiye exchanged $1.574 billion worth of commodities in the same period of last year.

Regarding Irans import of products from Turkiye, this country exported $944 million worth of products from Jan. to Apr. 2022, showing an 18% growth as compared to the last years corresponding period.

The Republic of Turkiye exported $799 million worth of products to Iran in the same period last year.

Turkiyes import of products from Iran in the first four months of the current year recorded a 60% increase, so that Turkiye had imported $775 million worth of products from Iran from Jan. to Apr. 2021, the rate of which hit $1.231 billion in the first four months of the current year in 2022.

Iran is Turkiyes 19th export destination and Iran- Turkiye trade value in 12 months of the previous year in 2021 hit $5.594 billion, showing a 53% growth as compared to the same period last last year.

MA/IRN84793172

Continue reading here:
Irans exports growth to Turkiye hits 60% this year - Mehr News Agency - English Version

A flare-up in tensions between the UN nuclear monitor and Iran this week has left US President Joe Biden in an increasingly tight jam.

The US leader opened his presidency with a pledge to return to the 2015 international agreement that aimed to prevent Tehran from building nuclear weapons, after predecessor Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it.

Negotiations to restore that agreement have been at an impasse for three months over the very last details.

Without a deal -- and Iran ever closer to nuclear "breakout" -- Biden has a tough choice: tomake more concessions to Tehran, and be accused of weakness by Republican opponents ahead of midterm elections, or declare the talks dead, which could spark a new Middle East crisis.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Thursday that Tehran's removal this week of 27 cameras monitoring its nuclear sites could deal a "fatal blow" to negotiations.

"At this stage, things can go either way," said Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group. "The tension of the past few days could potentially stir leadership in Tehran and Washington to take the deal that is on the table."

Or, he said, "It's the first step in another cycle of escalation, and from this point on it would only get worse."

"Worse" could mean Tehran moving ahead to build a nuclear weapon, and its opponents like Israel and US hardliners demanding hard action to prevent that.

The talks in Vienna between Iran and the major powers resumed last year at Biden's impetus, with the US willing to rescind sanctions in exchange for Tehran returning to full implementation of the 2015 JointComprehensivePlan of Action (JCPOA).

But at the edge of a deal three months ago, the talks stalled, due -- according to US officials -- to final demands by Iran unrelated to nuclear issues.

Meanwhile, officials say, Iran has pushed ahead with uranium enrichment operations that take it close to a weapons capability.

Story continues

The situation deteriorated this week when members of the IAEA censuredIran for not cooperating. A day later Iran removed the 27 cameras.

Supporters say the deal is the only thing that has prevented Iran from building nuclear weapons, and that saving it is worth Biden giving Tehran some concessions.

But opponents -- Republicans, and strong supporters of Iran's nemesis Israel -- say Iran's lack of cooperation shows the agreement is not worth pursuing.

If Tehran's accelerated uranium enrichment operations "are not sufficient to get the Biden administration to change course, what will?" asked Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think-tank, which has opposed the JCPOA.

"The time has come for a multilateral version of maximum pressure," he said, referring to Trump's approach.

Even among Biden's Democratic Party, some voices are growing impatient.

"At what point will the administration acknowledge that Iran's nuclear advances make a return to the 2015 JCPOA not in the United States' strategic interest?" said Senator Bob Menendez.

Vaez says that the Biden administration has settled into the situation of having neither an agreement nor a crisis over it.

"The developments of the past 48 hours have basically demonstrated to both sides that the status quo in the past three months of no deal, no crisis is really not sustainable," said Vaez.

Yet Washington hasn't set a deadline. On Thursday Secretary of State Antony Blinken only warned that the removal of the monitoring cameras threatened JCPOA restoration.

"The only outcome of such a path will be a deepening nuclear crisis and further economic and political isolation for Iran," Blinken said.

Instead of a hard line, the top US diplomat kept the door open.

Returning to the deal "would still achieve our most important and urgent nonproliferation goals and would be strongly in our national security interests," said a Blinken spokesperson.

Randa Slim, a researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington, called the impasse a state of limbo "whereby everybody will assume that the Vienna talks have collapsed, but nobody will be willing to announce it."

That is Biden's dilemma, she said.

If they declare the talks over and conclude that Iran has imminent nuclear weapons capability, Washington could be forced into taking direct action against Iran, or supporting such action by Israel, said Slim.

"There are two clocks ticking .... putting a lot of pressure on the Biden administration," said Vaez.

One is the clock on Tehran's actual nuclear technology advances, he said.

"And then there's the political clock," of the congressional elections in November that could deeply erode Biden's political clout.

fff/dax/mav/pmh/bgs

Originally posted here:
Iran's nuclear tactics leaves Biden with tough choices

Tehran, Iran Two men working in Irans aerospace industry have died in separate incidents while on active duty, according to Iranian state media.

The elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) branch in Markazi province announced in a statement carried by Iranian media late on Sunday that Ali Kamani, a member of the IRGCs aerospace division working in Khomein, some 320km (200 miles) south of the capital Tehran, was killed in a driving accident while on an unspecified mission.

Then, early on Monday, the semi-official Fars news website, affiliated with the IRGC, reported that another aerospace worker, a 33-year-old called Mohammad Abdous, had also died while on mission.

Irans defence ministry later said that Abdous worked for the ministry.

The labelling of both deaths as martyrdoms possibly indicates that the Iran believes the men to have been killed.

No details of Abdous death were published, other than that he passed away on Sunday in the northern province of Semnan.

Kamani and Abdous are the latest in a string of mysterious deaths that have occurred in the past few weeks.

One of them, an IRGC Quds Force colonel, Ali Esmaeilzadeh, was reported by state media to have died in an accident earlier this month.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency, which is close to the IRGC, rejected claims by a London-based Iranian opposition television channel that Esmaeilzadeh was eliminated by the IRGC over suspicion of involvement in the May 22 assassination of another colonel.

Tasnim described the claim as psychological war and news fabrication and said he fell from the unsecured balcony of his home.

On May 31, an aerospace engineer called Ayoob Entezari died under suspicious circumstances. Israeli media, which claimed Entezari had worked on Irans missile and drone programmes, said he had been poisoned at a dinner party, and that the host had fled the country.

But the judiciary in Yazd, where he died, called the 35-year-old Entezari an ordinary employee at an industrial company who died from an unspecified illness at a hospital and had nothing to do with the IRGC.

Prior to that case, on May 26, Irans defence ministry confirmed that an engineer, Ehsan Ghadbeigi, had been martyred and that another person was injured after an accident occurred at the Parchin military complex near Tehran. The New York Times reported at the time that Ghadbeigi had been killed in a suspected Israeli drone attack.

The most high-profile case in the last few weeks came on May 22, when Quds Force Colonel Hassan Khodaei was assassinated shot five times by two motorcyclists as he returned home in Tehran. He was described as a defender of the shrine a term used to describe anyone who works on behalf of Iran in Syria.

The commander-in-chief of the IRGC, Hossein Salami, publicly blamed Israel for assassinating Khodaei, and manytop officials have vowed revenge.

Khodaeis killing was the most high-profile assassination on Iranian soil since the November 2020 murder of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Iran has blamed the assassination of Fakhrizadeh, and several sabotage attacks on its nuclear and military sites, on Israel, which is also thought to have been behind several other assassinations of nuclear scientists inside Iran in the past decade.

The other recent deaths, however, have not been officially confirmed as killings by Iran, and have also not publicly been linked to Israel.

But tensions between the two archenemies have significantly escalated in the past few months as Israel continues to warn that Iran is advancing towards building a nuclear bomb and that it reserves the right to take measuresto thwart it.

Iran says its nuclear programme is strictly peaceful.

The Israelis also appear to be stepping up their attacks on Iranian interests in Syria, where Tehran has militarily backed President Bashar al-Assads government in the countrys civil war.

On Friday, Israel was blamed for a missile attack at the Damascus International Airport in Syria that caused heavy damage in an attack suspected of being aimed at Iranian interests in the area.

The attacks come as the chances of restoring Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers have decreased in recent months as negotiations with the United States which unilaterally abandoned the deal in 2018 have stalled.

Iran has also conducted its own anti-Israel operations. The most high-profile Iranian hit on an alleged Israeli target came in mid-March when the IRGC launched ballistic missiles at a site in Erbil in northern Iraqs Kurdish region, which it said was operated by Israels Mossad spy agency.

The IRGC also shelled an area in Erbillast month that it said was held by terrorist groups.

Iranian medias focus on some other incidents is also cited by some as a potential indication of Tehrans involvement.

In recent weeks, Iranian media outlets have covered several fires that have broken out in Israel, without assigning responsibility to any group.

They also extensively covered a drone attack in Erbil last week, when some reports indicated that a Mossad operative was targeted in a vehicle. Israeli media mocked the drone attack, saying no Mossad operative was at the scene.

The rest is here:
Two Iranian aerospace staff martyred: State media - Al Jazeera English

As protests in Iran spread to Tehran on Sunday and continued on Monday, criticism of the government's economic and foreign policies intensified in the media.

Mehdi Pazouki, one of the Iranian economists who had warned President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday that the underlying cause of the ongoing crisis is bad governance, and warned Raisi to introduce deep changes or wait for further chaos, said in an interview with Didban Iran website that his administration is the weakest government in Iran's history.

Pazouki criticized Raisi for forming a government by choosing his ministers and aides from among the members of a certain clan, such as appointing a politician [Ali Bagheri Kani] as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator who has always been against a nuclear agreement with the West. He also argued that Raisi has no economic program for the country although he had claimed during his election campaign to have a 7,000-page plan.

Like many other critics, Pazouki also maintained that Raisi's cabinet continues to blame the previous government for the country's problems to cover up its own inefficiency. Mentioning examples from the performance of Labor Minister Hojjat Abdolmaleki, Pazouki said that the minister's counter-productive performance in the area of wages and pensions has led to more unemployment and dissent.

Giving key jobs to non-experts, failing to prevent the effective devaluation of the national currency, being unable to do anything about rising food prices and wasting hefty budgets on useless organizations such as The Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution are among the other negative points of the Raisi administration, Pazouki added.

Retirees protest in Zanjan on Monday, June 12, 2022

Meanwhile, former vice president Mostafa Hashemi Taba told reporters that the country's situation is getting worse on a daily basis, adding that it was evident from day one that Raisi was not able to stand by the promises he made during his election campaign. Hashemi Taba further said, that those promises were so extravagant that not only Raisi, but no other president could have accomplished them.

Meanwhile, interviews with fuel distribution officials indicated that there is a growing concern among consumers about an imminent rise in fuel prices. Some media in Iran have revealed that customers' gas rationing cards are being recalled and collected at some gas stations and this has given further rise to concerns about possible new rations and new prices. Although officials have tried to deny the rumors, Iranians generally believe based on previous experience that whatever officials deny today will come out to be true the next day.

Reformist political analyst Ahmad Naqibzadeh told Didban Iran that it appears officials are adamant to continue policies that have proven to be ineffective in the past. He added that they are not even willing to correct their wrong policies and call their critics the enemies of the state.

Criticism of Raisi's foreign policy is mainly about his government's failure to successfully carry out the nuclear negotiations in Vienna. Iranian lawmaker Zabihollah Azami said in an interview with Rouydad24 website on Sunday that the government should be held accountable for the opportunities it missed in the Vienna negotiations.

Iranian businesses and economists hoped that the negotiations would lead to the lifting of US sanctions and improving the battered economy, but critics now say the government's mistakes have led to the suspension of the talks since March.

View post:
Criticism of Iran Government Intensifies As Unrest Spreads To Tehran -