Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has told the media that the national oil company NIOC struck light sweet oil in a hitherto untapped oil region.
“This is the first time we’ve reached oil in the Abadan region,” Zanganeh said, adding that the grade was very light and sweet, but giving no details regarding the amount of reserves contained in the reservoir.

Iran has continued to pursue new oil production opportunities despite US sanctions that have reduced its crude oil exports significantly although probably not as significantly, to date, as planned. As of December, Iran was shipping some 1.3 million bpd abroad, the International Energy Agency said in its latest Oil Market Report.

U.S. citizen Marzieh Hashemi, an anchor on Iran’s English-language service Press TV, has been released without charge after being illegally detained for ten days by the FBI.

Hashemi was arrested earlier this month while boarding an internal U.S. flight from St. Louis to Denver where she had been filming a documentary on the Black Lives Matter movement. The 59-year-old African American is a convert to Islam and has been living in Iran for the past several years.

Her arrest prompted protests across the world after it emerged she had not been charged with a crime, as well as reports that she had been denied Halal food and had her hijab forcibly removed while in detention.

“Marzieh and her family will not allow this to be swept under the carpet,” the woman’s family said in a statement shortly after her release. They “still have serious grievances [and] they want assurances that this won’t happen to any Muslim – or any other person – ever again.”

An Iranian television anchorwoman believes the US government jailed her as a witness in order to send a message.

Marzieh Hashemi told The Associated Press on Thursday she suspects she was jailed because of her work as a journalist and her beliefs.

She said she sees her detention as the U.S. government telling her to "watch your step" but won't be intimidated.

Hashemi was released Wednesday after being detained for 10 days as a material witness in an ongoing grand jury investigation.

Iranian companies have signed $1 billion in contracts for enhanced recovery at nine aging oilfields of the country which is now left to its own devices in the face of the most restrictive US sanctions ever.

Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh oversaw the signing between two subsidiaries of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and seven domestic contractors to raise recovery at the fields by 90,000 barrels a day, media reports said Wednesday.

The fields – seven located in Khuzestan province and two in Bushehr and Fars provinces – are all onshore. They are among 33 oilfields selected for revival by Iranian companies at a total cost of $6 billion over three years after which they will add 300,000 barrels a day to Iran’s production capacity.

A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday that the Islamic Republic backs Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro after the United States announced its support for Juan Guaido, the leader of the country’s opposition-held National Assembly, as the country’s interim president.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran,” explained Bahram Qasimi to local media, “supports the government and people of Venezuela against any sort of foreign intervention and any illegitimate and illegal action such as attempts to foster a coup d’etat.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called on Maduro to hand over to Guaido, who is also supported by the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Paraguay. Maduro has the backing of Russia, Iran, Turkey, Uruguay, Cuba, Syria and Palestine.

I do not for one second doubt that Americans are feeling more stressed and suffering more health-degrading symptoms as a result than they were prior to Trump’s election. But Pacific Standard and its “growing body of research” ignore the most obvious and significant culprit behind this phenomenon which is tearing people’s health to shreds: the mass media which has been deliberately fanning the flames of Trump panic.

The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia’s natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.

Ten days ago, US citizen Marzieh Hashemi was arrested at the St. Louis Lambert Airport, and transferred into FBI custody. On Wednesday, she was finally released, having never been charged with a crime.

Hashemi is a journalist and an anchor for Iran’s PressTV, and her arrest was the subject of mounting international scrutiny, though the US government had refused virtually all comment. Officially she was kept in prison as a “material witness.”

Hashemi and her family issued a statement following her release, saying she retains “serious grievances” about her treatment in the US prison system, during which her hijab was forcibly removed, and she was denied food in keeping with her religious requirements. She has promised to continue protests to prevent the US from imprisoning people without charges like this ever again.

Iran, Turkey and Russia throw their weight behind the Venezuelan government against a bizarre move by the US-backed opposition leader to proclaim himself “president,” warning Washington against interfering in domestic affairs of the South American state.

On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the Islamic Republic “backs Venezuela’s nation and legitimate government in the face of any foreign meddling in the country’s domestic affairs or any illegitimate and illegal measure such as attempts for a coup or moves against the people.”

“We hope that any disagreement and political problem in Venezuela will be resolved by the country’s own people and government as soon as possible via legal and peaceful solutions,” he added.

The collapse of the prior 'deescalation' agreement comes at a time when the White House has vowed to stick to the planned US pullout, however, this could be yet a another major development to complicate or delay any possible withdrawal timeline. FT described current Turkish-Russian talks in Moscow as follows:

Russia has accused Turkey of failing to live up to a promise to clear Syria’s Idlib of extremist militant groups and admitted that a landmark ceasefire agreement made last September had failed. Ahead of crunch talks between the leaders of the two countries in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia’s foreign ministry said the Islamist extremist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had “full control” of Syria’s last remaining major opposition stronghold. The damning assessment came four months after Moscow agreed to postpone a planned military assault on the city in exchange for a promise from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to clear it of militants.

The federal government has forcibly seized, shackled, and kept imprisoned an American citizen who has not even been charged with a crime. They have incarcerated the 59-year-old grandmother for over a week and say they will continue to do so for an unquantified period of time into the future.

For several days the government refused to admit it had taken the woman from the St. Louis airport as she was on her way to visit a sick brother.

For 48 hours, authorities refused to allow her to contact her family, and refused to tell anyone, including mainstream news media like the Associated Press, CNN, and Fox News where they were holding her.

Finally, a judge, who perhaps remembered what the United States Constitution requires, partially unsealed the court records, and the government’s official rationale became public: she had been forcibly taken away, shackled, and imprisoned because she was, they said, a “witness.” To a still-unspecified crime.

“Stop the ENDLESS WARS!” implored President Donald Trump in a Sunday night tweet.

Well, if he is serious, Trump had best keep an eye on his national security adviser, for a U.S. war on Iran would be a dream come true for John Bolton.

Last September, when Shiite militants launched three mortar shells into the Green Zone in Baghdad, which exploded harmlessly in a vacant lot, Bolton called a series of emergency meetings and directed the Pentagon to prepare a menu of targets, inside Iran, for U.S. air and missile strikes in retaliation.

The Wall Street Journal quoted one U.S. official as saying Bolton’s behavior “rattled people. … People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.”

Bolton’s former deputy, Mira Ricardel, reportedly told a gathering the shelling into the Green Zone was “an act of war” to which the U.S. must respond decisively.

Russia has urged Israel to stop its "spontaneous" airstrikes on Syria, days after the Israeli military carried out fresh strikes against targets near the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Israel has repeatedly attacked Syrian government positions under the pretext that its attacking Iranian military advisers, who are in the country on a request from President Bashar al-Assad to assist the Syrian Army in their fight against foreign-backed terrorists.

"The practice of spontaneous strikes on the territory of a sovereign state, in this case Syria, must end," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, according to Russia's TASS state news agency.

Zakharova (pictured below) said such moves by Tel Aviv only fueled tensions in the region and harmed the long-term interests of all regional players, including Israel itself.

TENSIONS between Iran and Israel are "escalating and intensifying" after Israel struck Iranian targets this week, a former Pentagon official has warned.

World War 3: 'Rapid military escalation' occurring between Iran and Israel
TENSIONS between Iran and Israel are "escalating and intensifying" after Israel struck Iranian targets this week, a former Pentagon official has warned.

World War 3 fears were sparked this week after Israel hit the Syrian capital of Damascus early on Monday as part of its increasingly open assault on Iran's presence there. In response, Iran issued a chilling message to arch-enemy Israel – warning it is “impatient” and ready to confront and destroy the nation in a statement issued just hours after Israel launched the air raids in Syria.

Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari said that it was time that the United Nations Security Council took action to stop constant Israeli attacks on Syrian territory, adding that Damascus might exercise its right to self-defence and respond to the Israeli attack on Damascus Airport with a symmetric strike on Tel Aviv Airport.

"Isn't it is the right time for this council to take the necessary measures to stop the repeated Israeli aggression against the territories of my country or should we attract the attention of the war makers in this council be exercising our legitimate right for self-defence and respond to the Israeli aggression against the Damascus International Airport by launching an aggression against Tel Aviv Airport?" Jaafari said speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

Despite claiming that their Sunday night airstrikes against Syria were exclusively targeting Iran’s Quds Force, Israeli airstrikes against Syria appear to have almost exclusively hit Syrian military targets, particularly the nation’s air defenses around Damascus airport.

Israeli strikes destroyed eight Syrian air defense batteries, and killed at least 11 troops in the strikes. The batteries were mostly aging Soviet designs, the sort Syria has traditionally favored for targeting incoming Israeli missiles.

The Syrian systems had some success, too, with Russia reporting that the Syrians had successfully intercepted more than 30 Israeli missiles during the attack. Conspicuously absent from the engagement, however, were the Russian S-300 systems recently provided to Syria.

The sarcastic tweet continues the Israeli rhetoric towards Iran, which was recently reiterated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed that Israel had targeted Iranian forces in Syria in its recent airstrikes. Tehran has repeatedly denied Tel Aviv's accusations, stating that it has only sent military advisers to the Arab Republic.

The official Twitter account of the Israel Defence Forces has posted a mocking picture featuring a map of the Middle East with an arrow drawn pointing at Syria and captioned "where Iran is" and several arrows pointing to Iran on the map with the caption "where Iran belongs" in an apparent reference to Israeli claims that Tehran has sent units from its Quds Force to the Arab Republic.

In response to Israel’s attack Sunday on Iranian targets in the Damascus region, the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard fired a medium-range surface-to-surface missile at the Hermon Mountain vicinity. Apparently, the attack had been planned for a long time and approved by the Iranian regime in Tehran. The missile was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system.

Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Abdolnasser Hemmati announced on Monday that Japan has resumed supply of crude from Iran.
"Japan started operations to import oil from Iran today after China, South Korea, India and Turkey," Hemmati wrote on his Instagram page on Monday.

He added that the revenues collected from the new oil deals along with tens of billions of dollars seen as active CBI resources in foreign banks are a strong and safe backup for Iran's economy and will be used for the country's trade.

After suspending all shipments of Iranian crude to Japanese refineries ahead of the November 5 launch of US sanctions against Tehran, Japanese refiners resumed Iranian oil imports.

Japan is one of Iran’s largest oil importers, but it is also the United States’ staunchest ally in Asia—and the combination of the two has not worked to Tokyo’s advantage.

China's state-run energy giant Sinopec offered a three-billion-dollar deal to further develop an Iranian oilfield the two countries are already working on, media reports said.

The offer made by the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) is part of an existing contract to operate the Yadavaran oilfield in Southwest Iran on the Iraqi border, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz says that Iran has not been invited to an international conference on the Middle East in Warsaw next month. Czaputowicz said in remarks published on Monday that Iran’s presence would have hampered talks because the language that Tehran uses is “hard to accept.” Iran has protested over the February 13-14 conference, calling it a hostile move. Poland and the US are co-hosting the event, which has also been met with a lukewarm reaction from the European Union, whose foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini will not be attending. Czaputowicz also said Russia has advised that it will not participate either, AP reports.

Israeli policy for attacking targets in Syria has changed and is intensifying, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said Monday morning in an interview with Army Radio.

In response to a missile launch by Iranian forces from Syria into Israeli territory which intended to hit the northern Golan Heights, IDF fighter planes attacked Syrian military targets and Syrian air defense batteries overnight on Sunday and early Monday morning.

Institute for National Security Studies says the volatile situation along the northern border as well as in the Gaza Strip could lead Israel to war against Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians at the same time.

The reports on the dramatic rise in the number of Iranians seeking asylum in Europe, especially unaccompanied children, are profoundly unsettling.

Prominent human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr recently drew attention to this phenomenon through a Twitter thread in which she highlighted the rise in the number of Iranian asylum seekers between 2013 and 2018.

"Interestingly, last year," she tweeted, "the number of unaccompanied Iranian children seeking asylum was higher than the number of unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Syria - three countries that are involved in armed conflict."

The Israeli military announced its jets struck Iranian targets in Syria, leading Tehran officials saying the want to 'eliminate' Israel.

Israeli jets struck a series of Iranian military targets in Syria early on Monday, the military said, leading Iranian officials announce they want to "eliminate it (Israel) from the Earth".

The Israeli military said the targets included munition storage facilities, an intelligence site, and a military training camp.

The strikes were in response to a surface-to-surface rocket that Iranian forces fired toward Israel on Sunday that was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system over a ski resort in the Golan Heights, following an Israeli daylight air raid near the Damascus International Airport.

The Israeli military said its jets struck Iranian military targets in Syria early Monday, an announcement that marked a rare departure from Israel's yearslong policy of ambiguity regarding activities in neighboring Syria.

The military said the targets included munition storage facilities, an intelligence site and a military training camp.

The strikes were in response to a surface-to-surface rocket that Iranian forces fired toward Israel on Sunday that was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system over a ski resort in the Golan Heights. That launch followed a rare Israeli daylight air raid near the Damascus International Airport.

It's the first time that Israel has ever announced strikes against Iran inside Syria and in real time. Moments after a massive wave of rockets were fired on Damascus, activating Syrian anti-air defenses Sunday night, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced: "We have started striking Iranian Quds targets in Syrian territory. We warn the Syrian Armed Forces against attempting to harm Israeli forces or territory."

This is unprecedented given that in every other among the dozens of prior recent Israeli attacks on Syria, the IDF has never acknowledged responsibility so quickly and certainly not while they are ongoing, usually declining to confirm or deny after the event.

Distinguished Press TV journalist/anchor’s unlawful arrest, detention and mistreatment by the FBI, on the pretext of being a material witness regarding a case her family knows nothing about, gave the US another international black eye.

What happened captured world headlines, hopefully enough to help hasten Marzieh’s release. Press TV, the Tehran Times, and other Iranian media continue giving the case extensive coverage.

International print and electronic media have had feature stories on what happened – including RT, Sputnik News, the NYT, Washington Post, AP News, Reuters, CBS, NBC, and ABC News, CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera, the BBC, London Guardian, Haaretz, and numerous other outlets.

They’ve elevated Marzieh’s status as a distinguished international journalist to an even higher level than before what happened – by highlighting her unacceptable arrest, detention, and mistreatment uncharged.

Committee to Protect Journalists and PEN call for Justice Department to state why it has jailed US citizen Marzieh Hashemi, a prominent journalist with Iran’s Press TV. FBI & Justice Dept refuse to comment… possible court appearances not listed in dockets…

In the wake of the outcry after the abduction and murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – in a foreign country and under the directive of a rogue Crown Prince – one would think the threshold to condemn the detention of an American journalist in the United States without charge or trial would be quite low. Unfortunately, it has proven to be nearly insurmountable.

It has now been one week since Marzieh Hashemi, a US citizen and anchorwoman of Iran’s English-language news station, PressTV, has been held under these circumstances shortly after her arrival to St. Louis Lambert International Airport Jan. 12 to work on a documentary on the Black Lives Matter movement. Hashemi is purportedly an alleged material witness in an as-yet unspecified investigation. She was reportedly forced to remove her headscarf and offered pork to eat, both against the tenets of her religion, before being transferred to Washington, D.C. to an unknown location.

A court in the United States has confirmed the arrest of US-born Iranian Press TV news presenter Marzieh Hashemi as a material witness in an unspecified investigation.

Ms. Hashemi, 59, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on unspecified charges upon arrival at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday, her family and friends said.

At the request of the US Justice Department, Judge Beryl Alaine Howell, the chief district judge for the District of Columbia, issued a federal court order, approving the partial unsealing of the Press TV journalist’s case, Reuters reported.

According to the document, since her arrest, the journalist has appeared twice before a US district judge in Washington and has been appointed a lawyer.

The United States is seeking to put pressure on Iran through the arrest and imprisonment of Marzieh Hashemi, a journalist and anchor working for Iran’s English-language Press TV television news network, says an academic.

“I think they have motives, obviously we can only kind of guess at those, but clearly what is certainly happening is that this is an escalation, an escalation of harassment, an escalation in terms of trying to put pressure on Iran through Ms. Hashemi, through her treatment. They have purposely chosen this situation and escalated it so that it becomes the issue that it has become,” Kenneth Fero, lecturer at Coventry University, told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

“They have opened a new theater really and they are having their players running around and controlling everything. Later on today if it does goes to court we’ll be able to know whether she is being held as a material witness or whether she is actually going to be charged with anything,” he added.

Will the Trump administration embrace the Bolton doctrine? John Bolton, whom Donald Trump appointed in April to replace the stolid H.R. McMaster, has been trying to tailor administration foreign policy to match his hawkish views. Among his initiatives, the Wall Street Journal reported, is to make a move to do what he has long wanted done, which is to wage war against the mullahs in Tehran. The result is a schism in the administration.

It took a solid week after her detention in St. Louis, but Marzieh Hashemi, an anchor for Iran’s PressTV and an American citizen, has finally gotten into a courtroom, and learned that she is neither being accused of any crimes nor is she facing any charges. That said, they’re not expecting to let her go any time soon.

Hashemi is being held as a witness for a grand jury. Federal law technically allows such detention if a judge is convinced the person might not testify willingly, though legal experts have noted this is a tactic that has faced little legal challenge in the past, and might not stand up to a serious case. Hashemi does not finally have an attorney.

The law that allows for these detentions is meant to be very limited in use, and very temporary, with the detainee supposed to be released immediately after they are deposed. It is unclear, however, when they actually intend to depose Ms. Hashemi, and the early impression is that the detention may take some time.

European Union countries could snub an international conference on the Middle East scheduled to take place in Poland next month over concerns it is part of a US drive to ramp up pressure on Iran.

EU diplomats raised questions about the real agenda of the February 13-14 conference on Friday, saying it was organised at very short notice and noting that Iran did not appear to be invited.

An EU official said the bloc's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, had other commitments and would not attend.

The U.S. Justice Department and FBI continue to refuse to comment on the jailing of Marzieh Hashemi, a documentarian and news anchor on Iran’s English language station, Press TV.

The 59-year-old Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin in New Orleans, is an American citizen. She was in the U.S. filming a documentary on Black Lives Matter and visiting family when the FBI suddenly arrested her.

Hashemi is being held in Washington DC’s Correctional Treatment Facility. According to a Department of Corrections worker, she is in court now, but phone calls to DC district courts failed to find her.

Hashemi was held 48 hours before being allowed to contact her family. She has complained of ill-treatment. Authorities forcibly removed her headscarf and took her away in handcuffs.

Her son says he was told that she is being held as a “material witness.”

Iran will keep military forces in Syria, the head of the elite Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday, defying Israeli threats that they might be targeted if they do not leave the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israeli forces would continue to attack Iranians in Syria and warned them “to get out of there fast, because we will continue with our resolute policy”.

Rebuffing the threats, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Revolutionary Guards top commander, was quoted as saying by the semi-official ISNA news agency that “the Islamic Republic of Iran will keep all its military and revolutionary advisers and its weapons in Syria.”

A 2013 news investigation of Iranian corruption by Reuters news service has been cited by at least four books published one after another, the most recently in 2018.

It has also been cited by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2018 speech. Given the article’s ongoing influence, this article will scrutinize flaws in the reporting techniques and raise reasonable questions about several of its findings. The article will also mention, a piece of important historical context, that was long assumed, but made official in 2013 – the same year the story was published – when the US government released classified documents about its involvement in the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader in 1953 and the establishment of the Shah. The purpose of this article is not to stain the reputation of an entire news agency – but to simply lay out an alternative context for interpreting a single, influential story.

Having spent decades advocating a US attack on Iran, John Bolton’s position as National Security Adviser is allowing him to push the idea hard with President Trump. For those less enamored of that war, including Pentagon leadership, there is mounting concern that Bolton might provoke such a war.

So when Bolton came to the Pentagon asking them for military options for attacking Iran, nominally in retaliation for a Shi’ite Iraqi militia firing mortar shells in Baghdad, they were reticent.

The options they delivered were reportedly very limited. They involved little more than a show of force with limited airstrikes against some random Iranian military site. This was far short of what Bolton wanted, but former Defense Secretary James Mattis argued that even this was a bad idea, and no attack has happened yet.

In an effort to circumvent US-imposed sanctions, India and Iran have reportedly ditched the US dollar and are trading oil in rupees. The reason becomes clear after considering the dynamics at play in the region.

In mid-February last year, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited India, and the two countries signed nine agreements signalling a strengthening of ties. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to celebrate the growing relationship, stating that it was “a matter of great pleasure” for India that an Iranian president came to India “after a gap of 10 years.”

Fast-forward a few months later, and then-UN ambassador Nikki Haley was bluntly telling India that they should rethink their relationship with Tehran.

Earlier in January, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that if Tehran went ahead with plans to carry out space launches in the coming months, Iran would face more economic and diplomatic pressure.

Iran's failed attempt to launch a satellite into orbit with a three stage rocket demonstrates the Islamic Republic’s intent to develop missiles able to reach as far as Europe, Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Tuesday.

Marzieh Hashemi, a journalist and anchor working for Iran’s English-language Press TV television news network, has been detained and imprisoned in the United States for unspecified reasons.

American-born Hashemi, most famous for anchoring news programs and presenting shows for Press TV, was detained upon arrival at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday, her family and friends said.

Press TV has learned that she was transferred by the FBI to a detention facility in Washington, DC. The US officials have so far refused to provide any reasons for her apprehension either to her or her family.

The Associated Press (AP) said a call to the FBI rang unanswered early on Wednesday morning. The bureau did not immediately respond to a written request for comment, it added.

“Stop the ENDLESS WARS!” implored President Donald Trump in a Sunday night tweet.

Well, if he is serious, Trump had best keep an eye on his national security adviser, for a U.S. war on Iran would be a dream come true for John Bolton.

Last September, when Shiite militants launched three mortar shells into the Green Zone in Baghdad, which exploded harmlessly in a vacant lot, Bolton called a series of emergency meetings and directed the Pentagon to prepare a menu of targets, inside Iran, for U.S. air and missile strikes in retaliation.

The Wall Street Journal quoted one U.S. official as saying Bolton’s behavior “rattled people. … People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.”
Bolton’s former deputy, Mira Ricardel, reportedly told a gathering the shelling into the Green Zone was “an act of war” to which the U.S. must respond decisively.

A PressTV journalist has been mysteriously detained for over 48 hours by the FBI after she was apprehended at St. Louis Lambert International Airport while traveling to visit family, the network has learned.

The state-run, English-language Iranian network says its journalist and anchor Marzieh Hashemi was detained at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, Missouri and sent to Washington DC, where she is currently being held in an FBI detention facility. No charges have been filed against her, and no reason was given for her detention, according to a network spokesman who spoke to RT.

In 2017, less than a year before he became national security advisor, John Bolton promised a gathering of the Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK) that:

The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. … The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself. … And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!”

Israel has falsely inflated Iran’s presence in Syria to cover for its own failures in the region, a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry said on Monday.

Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said Iran did not have any military bases or military presence in Syria, and was only in the country “at the request of the Syrian government for advisory mission and fighting the terrorists,” according to a report by Iran’s official news agency, IRNA.

Well, if he is serious, Trump had best keep an eye on his national security adviser, for a U.S. war on Iran would be a dream come true for John Bolton.

Last September, when Shiite militants launched three mortar shells into the Green Zone in Baghdad, which exploded harmlessly in a vacant lot, Bolton called a series of emergency meetings and directed the Pentagon to prepare a menu of targets, inside Iran, for U.S. air and missile strikes in retaliation.

The Wall Street Journal quoted one U.S. official as saying Bolton’s behavior “rattled people. … People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.”

Bolton’s former deputy, Mira Ricardel, reportedly told a gathering the shelling into the Green Zone was “an act of war” to which the U.S. must respond decisively.

The Wall Street Journal published an Iran bombshell Sunday morning, confirming the White House had the Pentagon prepare "military options" to strike the country last year. The sudden request, seen as an unprecedented Iraq-style "shock and awe" attack on Iran, caught the Pentagon off guard, to the point that "State Dept. and Pentagon officials were rattled by the request" which officials further told the WSJ was "mind-boggling" and "cavalier" in terms of how brazen it was.

Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed today that Israel carried out an airstrike in Syria on Friday, in a rare public confirmation of such attacks.

The Israeli PM said the country successfully blew up an Iranian weapons storage facility at Syria's biggest airport.

'Just in the last 36 hours the air force attacked Iranian warehouses containing Iranian weapons in the Damascus International Airport,' Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting today.

Israel is prepared to take further action against Iranian targets in Syria to prevent Iran’s gaining a military stronghold in that country, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

"Just in the last 36 hours the air force attacked Iranian warehouses with Iranian weapons at the international airport in Damascus. The accumulation of recent attacks proves that we are determined more than ever to take action against Iran in Syria, just as we promised," he said as quoted by his office.

"Overnight, the air force also attacked on the southern front against Hamas targets in Gaza and this morning we announced the exposure of an additional tunnel, a main tunnel, perhaps the most important, that crossed the border into our territory. We are thus approaching the completion of the goal we set at the outset of Operation Northern Shield - the eradication of Hezbollah's tunnels weapon," he said.

Early on January 12, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out an airstrike on Syria. According to reports, Israeli warplanes, coming from the direction of Galilee, fired several missiles at a depot in the Damascus International Airport. The Syrian Air Defense Forces reportedly intercepted at least 8 of them.

Following the airstrike, Israeli warplanes were seen flying at high speed and low altitude over the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.

On January 13, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the IAF had targeted several “Iranian depots full of Iranian weapons in the Damascus International Airport”.

This incident was the second Israeli attack on Syria within a few weeks. On December 25, Israeli warplanes targeted several military positions around the Syrian capital. While Israeli sources claimed that the positions were being used by Iranian forces only, the airstrikes injured several Syrian service members.

In early September, during major protests in Iraq’s Shi’ite southeast, a group fired three mortar shells into the Green Zone of Baghdad. The shells landed in an empty lot, doing no damage and causing no casualties. Months later, it appears to be a much bigger story.

That’s because the Wall Street Journal is reporting that in the immediate aftermath, John Bolton and his National Security Council were encouraging a “forceful” US response. In the course of this, Bolton’s team asked the Pentagon to provide President Trump with “military options” to attack Iran.

It appears not to have taken long to go from Shi’ite protests and pinning the mortar fire on a Shi’ite militia, one that is officially part of the Iraqi government, to calls to attack Iran. That’s because US officials, particularly hawks, accuse Shi’ite militias anywhere in the world of being Iranian as a matter of course. In this case, it could’ve easily escalated into a US military attack on Iran.

Afghanistan will not allow the United States to use its bases in the country to conduct any act of aggression against Iran, says a top Afghan diplomat.

“Relations with neighbors are of special significance to the Afghan government in Kabul. Therefore, we will never allow the US to use its military bases against our neighbors such as Iran and Pakistan,” said Abdul Rahim Sayed Jan, Afghan ambassador to Turkey.

“The presence of US bases in Afghanistan has always been a source of concern for our neighbors, although, in line with the Afghan government’s agreement with the US, Washington can never use these bases against our neighbors,” added the envoy in his address to a conference on Afghanistan in Turkish capital Ankara, Turkish daily Yeni Akit reported on Saturday.

Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri says despite its mainly peaceful defense doctrine, the Islamic Republic maintains powerful and categorical military presence in the region, warning certain regional countries against inviting the US to the Persian Gulf to hatch plots against Iran.

"The revenues of these (gas) exports are based on euro as stated in the contract (with Iraq)," Montazer Torbati said on Saturday.

He added that the Central Banks of Iran and Iraq have made the decision about the currency to be used for gas exports after the US sanctions against Iran.

Iran is currently exporting 36.24 million cubic meters of gas on a daily basis, which marks a 45% rise in comparison with the figures of the last calendar year (March 21, 2017- March 20, 2018).

Iran’s Plan and Budget Organization announced in a report earlier this month that the country had increased its daily export of gas from 25 million cubic meters to 36.24 million cubic meters in the current Iranian year (started on March 21, 2018).

The announcement came by Kim Jun, chief executive officer and president of South Korea's SK Innovation, owner of South Korea's biggest oil refiner SK energy.

Kim said that his country will restart importing Iran's crude in late January or early February.

In November, South Korea won a six-month waiver from sanctions, imposed by the United States, allowing to purchase a limited amount of Iranian oil.

"As South Korea received a waiver and has been in talks with Iran about the first import volume, it seems (Iran oil) could be brought in late in January or early February at the earliest,” Kim told said on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

South Korean and Japanese buyers were expected to restart Iranian oil imports early this year, industry sources said in November. South Korea can buy up to 200,000 barrels per day of Iran's oil, mostly condensate, an ultra-light form of crude oil under the waiver, the sources said.

Top officials from Iran and Iraq held talks on Thursday on ways to boost cooperation between the two neighboring countries, just one day after a surprise visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the Arab country, which was supposed to convince Baghdad to restrict its ties with Tehran.

Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh on Thursday met with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, whose office said he "confirmed the deep relations between the two countries, the two neighboring peoples and the importance of strengthening them in areas that serve the interests of the two peoples, foremost of which is cooperation in the fields of oil and gas."

The Iraqi premier's office also said the Iranian oil minister "expressed his country's pride in the level of relations with Iraq and the aspiration to develop them, and hoped to achieve more cooperation and to meet the needs of Iraq's gas."

Commander of Pakistan’s Peace and Friendship Fleet Admiral Mohammad Salem underlined the Iranian Naval forces' key role in the establishment of peace and security in the Indian Ocean.

"The Syrian nation has fended off a major threat posed to the nation and the region by fighting against terrorism and we will accompany Syria until final victory as we have been standing beside the Syrian nation so far," General Hatami said in a meeting with Syrian Deputy Defense Minister Major General Mahmoud al-Shawa in Tehran on Monday.

He also underscored Tehran's preparedness to participate in reconstruction efforts in Syria.

General al-Shahwa, for his part, said that the Syrian government, nation and Armed Forces believe that their victories against the terrorists are indebted to Iran's supports.

Iran has played a military advisory role in Syria but has always denied deployment of forces in the country and other regional states.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has warned the United States of an “unprecedented defeat” in its campaign of sanctions and pressure against the Iranian nation.

Addressing a group of people from the holy city of Qom on Wednesday, the Leader said the Americans speak gleefully of “strongest sanctions in history” against Iran, “but the Iranian nation will, God willing, make them suffer an unprecedented defeat in history.”

“The nation and authorities should attentively work to turn the American sanctions into an unprecedented defeat for the Great Satan (the US), as was done during the era of Sacred Defense (the eight-year Iraq-imposed war),” said the Leader.

Tensions are continuing to rise between world superpowers. China has ordered its military to “enhance combat readiness” following a test of a MOAB (mother of all bombs); Russia and Iran are planning drills in the Atlantic; and the U.S. just sailed a Navy destroyer through the contested South China waters.

Last week, China’s President Xi Jinping Friday ordered the Chinese armed forces People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to enhance their combat readiness to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests after the U.S. had issued a travel warning to China stating Americans were at risk to arbitrary and indefinite detention.

On 19 December, US President Donald Trump announced victory over Daesh in Syria, adding that the fight against the terrorist group was the only reason the United States remained in Syria.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented at a joint press conference in Cairo on the US troops withdrawal from Syria and Washington's plans in the Middle East.

America is a "force of good" in the Middle East, Pompeo said. He also claimed that "when America retreats, chaos follows."

"For those who fret about the use of American power, remember: America has always been a liberating force, not an occupying power, in the Middle East. We've never dreamed of domination. Can you say the same of the Iranian regime?" the US secretary of state said.

Gonen Segev, who was caught trying to smuggle ecstasy into Israel in 2004, found guilty of aggravated espionage. Shin Bet: He gave Iran state information from his stint in cabinet

The European Union on Tuesday froze the assets of an Iranian intelligence unit and two of its staff, as the Netherlands accused Iran of two killings on its soil and joined France and Denmark in alleging Tehran plotted other attacks in Europe.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says Iran is working with its traditional partners such as China, Russia and India to circumvent the US sanctions.

Zarif told reporters in New Delhi Tuesday that the European Union is moving more slowly than expected to facilitate non-dollar trade with Tehran through a mechanism called the special purpose vehicle (SPV).

"We continue to work with the Europeans for the special purpose vehicle but we will not wait for them [to act]," said Zarif who arrived in the Indian capital late Monday for a three-day visit.

"We are working with our traditional partners like India, China and Russia so that we continue to serve the interests of our people," he added.

The top Iranian diplomat took to his official Twitter account on Tuesday to react to recent remarks made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton against the Islamic Republic.

"While ordinarily it might be flattering, @SecPompeo’s and @AmbJohnBolton’s pure obsession with Iran is more and more like the behavior of persistently failing psychotic stalkers," Zarif said.

The family of a U.S. Navy veteran says that he has been held for months in an Iranian prison after authorities in the country seized him in July, The New York Times reported on Monday.

Michael White's mother told the Times that State Department officials told her several week ago that her son is being detained in a prison in Iran.

“All I know is that he is alive and they were putting in a request for a consular visit by the Swiss,” Joanne White told the newspaper.

Joanne White said her son had visited Iran "five or six times" to see his Iranian girlfriend. He was set to return from Iran in July but never boarded his flight, prompting his mother to file a missing persons report.

Three months ago, in Mid-October, Subhash Chandra Garg, economic affairs secretary at India’s finance ministry, said that India still hasn’t worked out yet a payment system for continued purchases of crude oil from Iran, just before receiving a waiver to continue importing oil from Iran in its capacity as Iran's second largest oil client after China.

Denmark announced on Tuesday that the European Union has agreed to impose sanctions on Iran’s intelligence service over plans to assassinate opponents of the Islamic Republic across the European Union.

“The EU just agreed to enact sanctions against an Iranian intelligence service for its assassination plots on European soil,” wrote Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen on Twitter. “Strong signal from the EU that we will not accept such behaviour in Europe.”

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali al-Hakim laid out the latest step on the path to independence for Baghdad from the US concerning sanctions on Iran by Washington. Although Iraq currently has a 90-day waiver to trade with Iran issued on December 20th, Hakim let reporters know Iraq would be pursuing their own policy on Iran should the waiver not be renewed.

Hakim explained to reporters that

“These sanctions, the siege, or what is called the embargo,” imposed by the US is “unilateral, not international,” and Iraq is “not obliged [to follow] them.”

This is a big step for Baghdad to take in the face of pressure from Washington for Iraq to become “energy independent” with the help of US corporations exploiting their oil and gas resources. Instead, as explained by Hakim, Iraq would rather choose their own options for energy, even if that includes continuing the annual $12 billion in trade between Iraq and Iran flowing over US objections.

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said Sunday that the U.S. military withdrawal from northeastern Syria is conditioned on defeating the remnants of the Islamic State group, and on Turkey assuring the safety of Kurdish fighters allied with the United States.

Bolton, who traveled to Israel to reassure the U.S. ally of the Trump-ordered withdrawal, said there is no timetable for the pullout of American forces in northeastern Syria, but insisted it’s not an unlimited commitment.

“There are objectives that we want to accomplish that condition the withdrawal,” Bolton told reporters in Jerusalem. “The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.”

Iran’s Parliament Research Center is predicting negative growth for Iran in the current fiscal year that ends March 20 due to its falling exports, Radio Farda reported on Friday.

The economic contraction could be as significant as 5.5 percent negative growth, the Research Center figures, with the best-case scenario ending with a 2.6 percent negative growth.

The rosier scenario of the two assumes that Iran will see a 800,000 barrel per day loss in Iran’s crude oil exports. The bleaker view assumes Iran’s oil exports will dip by 1.6 million barrels per day.

Beyond March 2019, when this fiscal year ends, the research center is predicting a 4.5 to 5.5 percent contraction.

Iran’s oil exports have decreased despite Iran’s insistence that the U.S. sanctions levied against Iran in November would have no effect on its oil exports.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to depart on a tour of the Middle East next week in a bid to galvanize regional leaders to confront Iran and remind allies that the United States is not disappearing from region amid the Trump administration's decision to pull American troops out of Syria and possibly Afghanistan, according to senior State Department officials.

Pompeo will depart next week on his way to meet with government leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

The goal of the trip is to show regional allies that the "United States is not leaving the Middle East," according to senior State Department officials who previewed the secretary's itinerary on Friday.

The Iranian navy will send warships to deploy in the Atlantic from March, a top commander said on Friday, as the Islamic Republic seeks to increase the operating range of its naval forces to the backyard of the United States, its arch foe.

Iran sees the presence of U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf as a security concern and its navy has sought to counter that by showing the flag near American waters.

A flotilla will leave for the Atlantic early in the Iranian new year, starting from March, Iran’s naval deputy commander said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel will continue working against “Iranian military repositioning in Syria”.

Netanyahu’s comments were made in a phone call between the two leaders, Anadolu Agency reported, with Netanyahu’s office also sending a written statement about the issue to its Russian counterpart.

The statement – a copy of which reached Anadolu – said that both leaders discussed the latest developments in Syria, while “Netanyahu agreed with [Putin] to continue cooperation between the armies of the two countries [in Syria]”.

“Israel insists on continuing its efforts aimed at undermining the Iranian military’s repositioning in Syria,” Netanyahu said, according to the statement.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says he had “insisted” that the US reimpose sanctions on Iran, adding Tel Aviv complements economic pressures with its own actions "at the military level.”

US President Donald Trump “is acting against Iran at the economic level and we here in Israel are acting against Iran at the military level,” Netanyahu said in an address to Israeli military cadets on Thursday.

By military actions, Netanyahu apparently meant airstrikes against what Israel calls Iranian positions in Syria. Damascus says the attacks are part of Israel's efforts to prop up terrorists in the face of army advances.

Last week, an Israeli intelligence website refuted Tel Aviv's claims that a recent aerial raid in Syria had targeted Iranian military advisers and Hezbollah fighters, saying the attack actually hit Syrian army positions.

US President Donald Trump’s recent statements about Syria have alarmed Israeli officials and intelligence services, according to an Israeli report.

"It’s unfortunate that he isn’t paying attention to the evidence provided by the intelligence services," said an unnamed senior Israeli official speaking to the Israeli Ynet news website on Thursday.

"We are in a state of shock. Trump simply doesn’t understand the extent of the Iranian military's presence in the region."

The statement was made in response to Trump’s earlier remarks, which some Israeli media outlets described as an American “policy change” on Syria.

“Iran is pulling people out of Syria, but they can frankly do whatever they want there,” said Trump

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement preemptively warning Iran against following through on a plan to launch rockets into space, saying that they are required to cease all nuclear-related activities and that the US will not allow them to put international security at risk.

Pompeo further accused Iran of being in defiant of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, saying that Iran must not launch any rockets into space as a result.

Iranian officials dismissed these allegations, saying that no UN resolution prohibits them from sending vehicles into space. This is not the first time this has been a subject of dispute between the US and Iran on the UNSC 2231.

If anyone still thinks that Donald Trump has some master plan to kill off his Deep State adversaries they should check themselves into therapy. I know withdrawal is hard, but admitting you have a problem is the first step to curing it.

He doesn’t have a plan. He may fight them but it won’t be with any kind of master plan to trap them in some beautiful bit of political judo.

Frankly, Vladimir Putin he is not.

No, Trump is winging things at this point. While he still has the office he’s trying to do some of the things he promised. Doing that may keep him in power for a few more months.

But with his walking back the timetable for pulling troops out of Syria after a visit from Lindsay Graham (R-MIC/AIPAC) should tell you all you need to know about Trump’s willingness to stand up to the pressure he’s under.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has dismissed a new US claim that Iran's launch of space rockets and missiles breaches a Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, saying Washington has already violated that UN document and thus cannot comment on it.

Zarif was responding to remarks on Thursday by his American counterpart, Mike Pompeo on Iran's planned launch of three Space Launch Vehicles (SLV).

Pompeo said the SLVs incorporate technology that is "virtually identical" to that used in intercontinental ballistic missiles, claiming that such rocket launches would violate UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

Iran’s president submitted next year’s budget to parliament on Tuesday, the first since the United States restored sanctions that had been lifted under the nuclear deal.

The $47.5 billion budget is less than half the size of last year’s, mainly due to the severe depreciation of the local currency following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The Iranian rial has fallen from around 42,000 to the dollar a year ago to around 100,000 today.

The government plans to fund 35 percent of the budget with oil revenues, projecting exports of up to 1.5 million barrels a day at a maximum of $54 a barrel.

Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri says despite its mainly peaceful defense doctrine, the Islamic Republic maintains powerful and categorical military presence in the region, warning certain regional countries against inviting the US to the Persian Gulf to hatch plots against Iran.

Speaking on the war-torn country in wake of his momentous decision to pull out American troops, Trump sidelines question on move's timing, says it will 'happen over a period of time'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Arab countries see Israel as an “indispensable ally” to fight Iran and the jihadist group Daesh [ISIS].

This assessment, he told Brazil’s Globo TV during a visit to Rio de Janeiro, caused “a revolution in relations with the Arab world.”

The comments came as Israel intensified airstrikes on Iranian positions in neighboring Syria, and how Israel digested an abrupt decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw US troops from Syria.

Netanyahu has repeatedly warned that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons to destroy the Zionist entity.

US State Secretary Mike Pompeo on Tuesday discussed Iran’s "regional aggression" with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US State Department said in a statement.

“Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today in Brasilia, Brazil. They discussed the unacceptable threat that regional aggression and provocation by Iran and its agents poses to Israeli and regional security. The Secretary reiterated the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security and unconditional right to self-defense,” the statement read.