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Members of an Irish group arrested on terrorist charges after seeking arms from Hezbollah met with officials at Irans Dublin Embassy, security sources have told The National.

It can also be disclosed that the former members of the Provisional IRA have reactivated Hezbollah contacts to get finance and weapons for the New IRA terror group (NIRA).

The Irish terrorists have been seeking advanced bomb-making technology developed in Iran and Lebanon that would allow them to successfully penetrate police armoured vehicles in Northern Ireland, intelligence sources said.

Nine members of the NIRA, including three women, were arrested last week following a long-running undercover operation run by MI5, the British security service.

Among those who appeared in court after the arrests was Dr Issam Hijjawi Bassalat, a Palestinian, who was held on remand by a court this week charged with a single count of preparatory acts of terrorism. He reportedly travelled to a NIRA meeting where he was alleged to have briefed the accused about the situation in Palestine.

Security sources have disclosed that at least two people now in custody were at a commemoration ceremony in the embassy following the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a January drone strike by America.

It appears that they were forging the links between the New IRA, Iran and Hezbollah, said an intelligence source. No weapons from Hezbollah had been received although they were on the verge of concluding some form of agreement but now the whole thing has been shattered.

It is understood the embassy event also commemorated the death of the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who has a street named after him in Tehran.

Following Soleimani's death the political wing of NIRA, Saoradh, put out a statement saying they were "outraged at the murder".

There are warnings of a bombing campaign in Europe by Hezbollah after US intelligence disclosed that caches of ammonium nitrate had been hidden in several countries including France, Italy and Spain.

Going into an Iranian Embassy just shows that the links are strong because that's not been done on a whim, said Doug Beattie, an Ulster Unionist politician. Its a deliberate move to show that the New IRA have allegiance to the Iranian regime and Hezbollah and thats of great concern. It's clear that without a shadow of a doubt that the links between the new IRA and Hezbollah are increasing. They are getting ever more sophisticated in their technologies and passing on their bomb-making technology.

Mr Beattie, a decorated former British soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, warned if the political situation in Northern Ireland deteriorated over Brexit or Covid there was a real fear that experienced former Provisional IRA terrorists might join NIRA.

There was also a concern that contacts with Hezbollah might improve NIRAs ability to detonate bombs via remote control or other methods. There is higher level of sophistication that NIRA might be looking bring in from Hezbollah and that is a serious danger to police.

MI5 moved in on the terror group after it was established NIRA were close to securing weapons from Hezbollah following a visit to Lebanon in 2018 by the Irish dissidents.

Much of the information was gathered from covert bugging devices placed behind a private bar set up at a house in Scotland used by the undercover agent after taking the NIRA members to Celtic football matches in Glasgow.

Former police Detective Superintendent Dr Bill Duff, an intelligence academic, warned of shipping containers being used to bring in weapons and explosives from the Middle East. If Iran or Hezbollah were to load up a container with AK47's and plastic explosives in say, Karachi, bound for Dublin via several other container hubs then it is possible that it will get through."

He added that while the dissident republicans were mad, desperate and pathetic people that did not make them any less dangerous because if they manage to establish links with groups like Hezbollah who will certainly be inclined to support them".

Colin Breen, a former police officer and author, said that it appeared the Hezbollah connection had been made by old campaigners from the Provisional IRA.

They are making connections with Hezbollah for arms and cash but also because Hezbollah has international status as a terrorist group and that's a status the New IRA don't have.

In the past the IRA got weapons and other support from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Libya, the Colombian insurgents FARC and Spanish terror group ETA.

Updated: September 19, 2020 01:02 AM

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Irish terrorists in Hezbollah weapons sting met with Iranian embassy officials - The National

BAGHDAD An explosive device blew up late Thursday night inside the American Institute for English Learning in the holy city of Najaf, adding to concerns about an increase in such attacks in the country.

The blast damaged the facade of the institute without causing any casualties, Iraqi police said in a statement, noting that an investigation has been launched into the incident.

The American Institute is an educational centre that teaches English language. It is not formally affiliated with any institution in the US and all of its employees are Iraqis.

Shia militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr warned against targeting cultural and diplomatic sites in Iraq, which he said could lead the country to a dark tunnel and into a spiral of violence.

Whoever is behind the attack exposes Iraq and Iraqi to danger, he added.

Iran-backed militias are suspected of targeting the US presence in Iraq.

Hours before the attack on the English-language site Thursday, a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi convoy transporting equipment destined for the US-led coalition in the Babylon governorate without causing any casualties.

Over the past few weeks, attacks targeting the US presence and forces of other countries in the international coalition against ISIS have been on the rise.

Washington accuses armed Iraqi factions linked to Iran of being behind the attacks. Such factions have previously targeted the US embassy and military bases where American soldiers are deployed.

Analysts see that these attacks as part of efforts to embarrass the US administration before the November presidential elections, while others see them as aimed at pressuring the Iraqi government to follow through with an earlier vote in parliament demanding the withdrawal of US forces.

Armed Shia militia, including the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, threatened to target American troops in the country if they did not withdraw, in compliance with the Iraqi parliaments decision.

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Pro-Iran militias suspected of attack on US school in Iraq | | AW - The Arab Weekly

Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said in a televised address that Iran will expand its nuclear program and will not negotiate with the United States, doubling down on his defiance of the Trump administrations maximum pressure policy.

In a Friday speech for the Eid al-Adha holiday, Ayatollah Khamenei said that entering talks with Washington over Irans nuclear program, as President Trump has urged Tehran to do, would only improve Mr. Trumps chances of being re-elected in November. That, the ayatollah said, was Mr. Trumps reason for suggesting such talks in the first place.

He is going to benefit from negotiations, Ayatollah Khamenei said. This old man who is in charge in America apparently used negotiations with North Korea as propaganda, he added a reference to Mr. Trumps high-profile nuclear diplomacy on another front, which to date has been mostly fruitless.

Ayatollah Khamenei also said that Iran would maintain its close alliances with militia groups in the region that it uses as proxies, defying another demand from the Trump administration.

The Iranian leader was not the first to connect the possibility of talks with the United States to the presidential election. Last month, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Iran could make a better deal if it did so before November. Dont wait until after U.S. Election to make the Big deal, he wrote. Im going to win. Youll make a better deal now!

The United States has continued to tighten sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, which have had a crippling effect on the Middle Eastern countrys economy. On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the State Department would expand the sanctions to cover 22 materials believed to be used in Irans nuclear, military and ballistic missile programs.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that Iran would not try to negotiate its way out of the sanctions and that it would be better off relying on its own industrial development. He said the Americans were targeting his countrys economy in the hope that Iranians would rise up against their government, which the ayatollah dismissed as pipe dreams.

Mr. Khamenei said that developing the nuclear program was an absolute necessity for Irans future. He dismissed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and several world powers, which Mr. Trump abandoned in 2018, as very damaging, saying that Iran had suffered economic setbacks because of it.

Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is meant exclusively for peaceful purposes, but the United States and other countries believe it is pursuing the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who was in charge of the negotiations for Iran, said as recently as last month in Parliament that the negotiating team had Ayatollah Khameneis full support and blessing to reach a deal.

The ayatollah, who recently directed his closest economic advisers to cement a 25-year military and economic partnership with China, said in his speech that European countries involved in the nuclear deal were unreliable, and that their attempts to salvage the pact such as creating a secure financial channel so that Iran could maintain a limited amount of trade were useless games.

Some Iranian officials and analysts have said that Irans strategy was to wait out the remainder of Mr. Trumps term in hopes of a Democratic victory that could revive the deal, which was reached under President Barack Obama.

Khamenei has always believed that accommodating to one U.S. demand would bring about another demand and another, said Sina Azodi, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. For him, every solution would bring about another problem.

But analysts, entrepreneurs and businessmen inside Iran have warned that the economy risks collapse if the current situation continues.

Since the United States pulled out of the nuclear deal in May 2018, Irans currency has dropped sharply and inflation has surged. The government said it faced a budget deficit of nearly 30 percent this fiscal year. Oil sales have plummeted from 2.5 million barrels a day to about 300,000, nearly eliminating Iran from the global crude oil market.

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Iran Will Expand Nuclear Program and Wont Talk to U.S., Ayatollah Says - The New York Times

A group of Iranian and American musicians are using digital media to create music together, which they hope will spread joy and promote unity at a time when the two countries with strained relations are reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.

A video of the performance, produced with help from the North American Iranian Friendship Association (NAIFA), was released this week.

In the video, 19 musicians performed the musical composition in a socially distanced setting at Tehran's famed Roudaki Hall, while seven American opera singers in Washington sang along.

The performance was overlaid with recitations of poetry from Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet and philosopher.

Fatemeh Keshavarz, director of the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, and Vahid Abideh, founder of the NAIFA, came up with the idea in April.

Besides a beautiful performance, Abideh told CNN they wanted to combine Western music with Persian poetry to help bridge the cultural divide between the United States and Iran.

"The musicians on both sides are tremendously excited about helping us transcend the toxic threats of war and sanctions, rise above politics, and acknowledge each other's art and humanity," Keshavarz said in a statement.

"This is particularly needed at a time like this when the world is in the grips of a ferocious pandemic," she said. "It is a time to see each other's humanity and help each other heal. Nothing can do this better than art."

Timothy Nelson, artistic director for IN Series, described the collaboration as an effort to "make the impossible possible."

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated which Iranian orchestra participated in the musical collaboration. It was the Solidarity Chamber Orchestra of Tehran.

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Iranian and American musicians join forces to spread joy amid the pandemic - CNN

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced in early July that China and Iran were in the process of negotiating a 25-year strategic agreement, aiming to work together more closely in the coming decades.

The agreement is apparently close to being signed, with The New York Times reporting on it in detail after obtaining a Farsi version of the document.The deal foresees not only an economic partnership worth billions but also close military cooperation.

Read more:What is China's world order for the 21st century?

China sees Iran as a major market for its commodities and as a source of oil. Iran, for its part, hopes Chinese investments and its own exports will lessen some of the economic pressure of ongoing US sanctions.

Tehran's move toward Beijing is partly a reaction to the Trump administration's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement, said Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. But the US isn't the only reason, he told DW: Tehran is also disappointed that the Europeans have not lived up to their economic commitments.

Read more:Iran's declining birth rate alarms country's leaders

Iranian politicians have seen US power and international standing decline under President Donald Trump

Azizi said China and Russia were the only two countries that had maintained their economic ties with Iran, leading the Iranian government to see expanded ties with these two powers as the only viable option to save its economy from collapse. At the same time, he said, Iranian politicians increasingly had the impression that US power and international standing had begun to decline under President Donald Trump.

"As such, their understanding is that the best way to preserve Iran's interests in the long run is to define frameworks for long-term partnership with 'non-Western' powers," said Azizi.

But Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a senior lecturer of Middle East and comparative politics at the University of Tbingen's Institute of Political Science, believes Iran is negotiating from a weak position. Not only because the government is under immense economic pressure, he told DW, but also because the proposed cooperation has met with widespread disapproval in Iran.

Fathollah-Nejad said the agreement runs counter to Iran's aims to establish and maintain independence from both Western and Eastern major powers, put in place after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He also pointed out that China has a very negative image in Iran, where it has been omnipresent since the Europeans withdrew from the country under US pressure.

Read more:Aging populations challenge China, India, Iran and Japan

"Cheap Chinese products that have hurt the development of local industry, and China's role in the spread of the coronavirus in Iran, have both been targets of disapproval," he said.According to research by British broadcaster BBC, however, the Iranian airline Mahan Airoperated more than 100return flights to China in February and March, despite such flights being banned at the time.

As the pandemic raged through Iran, China sent medical supplies

Human rights organizations have accused the governments of both countries of committing serious human rights violations, with Amnesty International (AI) describing the way both regimes treat dissidents in almost identical words. AI has also criticized the justice systems in both countries, calling them unfair and arbitrary.

"As far as repression goes offline or online China is an important purveyor and inspiration for Iranian autocrats," said Fathollah-Nejad. He said it's no coincidence that the biggest advocates of Tehran moving toward an "Eastern" geopolitical orientation have come from the most authoritarian segments of the country's power apparatus.

Read more:Opinion: China is looking to challenge the US

"They see China as a kind of great savior that will guarantee the regime an economic lifeline for years, if not decades, while standing side by side with Iran politically and diplomatically as it opposes 'Western imperialism,'" he said.

Azizi believes the partnership with China could potentially worsen relations between the Iranian government and its people. "Given the dominant Western-oriented political culture in the Iranian society, long-term partnerships with nondemocratic powers could deepen the gap between the Iranian state and society," he said.

Together with Russia, Iran has resolutely supported Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the country's civil war and China has consistently backed their actions at the UN Security Council. Would a greater cooperation between Tehran and Beijing lead to repercussions elsewhere, boosting other authoritarian regimes?

Azizi doesn't think so, pointing out that such regimes don't need outside affirmation. For world powers, he said, the importance of the Middle East has always stemmed from its geopolitical situation and its natural resources.

Read more:China's lack of press freedom causes problems for the world

"[World powers have] publicly called for democracy and human rights in the region [but they've] never really cared about how Middle Eastern leaders rule their countries, as long as they continue to have favorable relations with those powers," he said.

As example, he points to Arab countries around the Persian Gulf, which have always been ruled by authoritarian monarchies. He said foreign powers have never had a decisive role in establishing democracy and human rights in the region.

"Those authoritarian governments cannot be more authoritarian, regardless of the composition of their foreign partners," he said.

People passing by on the other side of the street could mistake this for a mediocre suburban market in a small town in China. In fact, it's a shopping mall full of Chinese products in Zambia's capital, Lusaka. Here, at the JCS Food Town, visitors can buy vegetables, fruits, seafood, spices and even mobile phones as well as eat authentic Chinese dishes.

Most of the visitors to the market are Chinese expats. There are also a few westerners and Zambians who like the taste of Chinese cuisine. Few tourists have it on their itinerary. The Zambian employees perform mostly menial tasks such as cleaning, cooking and selling vegetables.

In this kitchen, mostly Sichuan cuisine is prepared. The Chinese chef has several Zambian assistants whose help is needed particularly at noon when most expats flock in to place their orders. The market offers a variety of Chinese delicacies, including roasted duck and crayfish yummy!!

These Zambian vegetable traders said they are fairly new in the market and business is "okay." One commented: "We can learn how to do business from the Chinese." Any contact is limited to the workplace; neither of them has any Chinese friends.

This Chinese expat says he has Zambian friends. He has been living in Zambia for 13 years. He told DW he is very fond of Lusaka and has got used to life there. "I am well integrated, but most Chinese people may not be. Chinese nationals generally prefer to stay amongst themselves," he said.

This Zambian employee said she couldn't complain about her work. Her boss (on the left) is very good to her and her colleagues, she maintained. And he "pays very well." However, she is vastly outnumbered by the number of locals who tell negative tales about their Chinese employers.

This young lady is one of the main reasons why the market looks spick and span. She's not used to people showing interest in her work and rewarded the DW reporters with a big smile.

Author: Abu-Bakarr Jalloh, Fang Wan

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Iran looks to partner with China, as the West steps back - DW (English)