Syria Says Israeli Strike Puts Aleppo Airport Out Of Service

Citing the officials, the Washington Post added that Yektaparast, the founder of the Hell’s Angels group in the German city of Monchengladbach, is suspected of directing attacks from Tehran, through his criminal networks in Germany, allegedly at the behest of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Those attacks are part of what Germany’s security services see as an uptick in Iranian regime activity aimed at Jewish targets as well as the Iranian diaspora in Germany.”

That would be in line with a reported increase in Iranian assassination and kidnapping threats in Europe and the United States, underlined the report.

“Analysts say that while facing protests at home, Iran is increasingly going after what it sees as foreign threats to the regime and is using criminal gangs to add a cloak of deniability.”

However, Germany and some other European countries are reluctant to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization because, in their opinion, the window of diplomacy with Iran may be closed amid concerns about the country's nuclear program.

In November, an unknown person fired several times at the door of a synagogue in downtown Essen in western Germany.

Nobody got hurt, but the investigators assumed the act was part of a series of anti-Semitic attacks probably launched by a cell of terrorists managed by the IRGC.

Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said on national television that the country’s air defenses shot down 13 out of 15 Iranian drones after air raid sirens sounded for hours in Kyiv.

The air force said Russian forces had launched Iran-made Shahed drones from the Bryansk region northeast Kyiv.

The AFP quoted the head of the Kiev’s military administration, Sergiy Popko as saying that drones had been heading for Kyiv but Ukraine’s air defense forces downed them and they did not cause injuries or hit infrastructure.

Tehran has been supplying Moscow with drones to use against Ukraine. The Islamic Republic has been hit by multiple rounds of sanctions from the US, the UK, and the European Union. Iranian officials claim the drones were sent to Russia prior to the war in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky in December stated that Russia has received an additional 250 Shahed drones from Iran on top hundreds supplied earlier that have been used to attack Ukraine's energy sector and infrastructures.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson on Monday claimed that Kyiv has not been able to provide evidence of Iranian-made drones being used in Ukraine.

The Constitutional Court of Belgium on Friday rejected a request to annul a prisoner exchange treaty with the Islamic Republic signed last year that can lead to the release of an Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, convicted of terrorism, for Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, held hostage in Iran.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday that the ground is ready to execute the prisoner exchange pact.

"With the recent development, we hope to see an opening in connection with the case of this diplomat," added Nasser Kanaani.

However, the Belgian Supreme Court said in its ruling that plaintiffs can appeal to lower courts to block Assadi’s repatriation to Iran.

Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele was arrested on a visit to Iran in February 2022 and sentenced in January to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes on charges including spying.

Brussels gave a 20-year jail term to Assadi in 2021 over a foiled bomb plot in the first trial of an Iranian official for suspected terrorism in Europe since Iran's 1979 revolution.

Under a treaty Belgium and Iran signed in 2022, Vandecasteele would have been eligible to be swapped for Assadi but in December Belgium’s constitutional court suspended the implementation of the treaty until it could make a ruling.

Some Belgian lawmakers voiced concern that the prisoner exchange treaty might lead to "hostage diplomacy" and put other Belgians at risk of detention.

Iran has provided Russia with hundreds of kamikaze drones that have been used to attack Ukrainian infrastructure. Western countries say the Islamic Republic is open to further military cooperation with Russia.

However, Financial Times quoted some western officials that despite pressures on its own supplies, Russia has held back from purchases of Iran’s long-range ballistic missiles.

According to assessments in NATO countries, the Kremlin is afraid that Washington might provide Kyiv with the long-sought ATACMS missile system, whose 300km range could reach deep into Russian held territory in Crimea.

“The system has almost four times the range of US-supplied Himars missile systems that Ukraine has used to devastating effect against Russian forces,” adds the report.

Iran’s Fateh-313 and Zulfiqar ballistic missiles have ranges of 500km and 700km respectively.

Helped by Russia, Iran has developed the largest fleet of ballistic missiles in the Middle East under a program that Washington described in 2019 as “increasingly accurate” and “sophisticated”.

Western Officials say the Islamic Republic and Russia explored exchanging modern weaponry for ballistic missiles but those talks have stopped because of the potential repercussions of such a deal for both sides.

Ali Pour-Tabatabaie, who is one of the administrators of Qom News website was reportedly detained on Sunday morning in Qom 120 kilometers south of Tehran.

According to local media, including Etemad Daily, there is still no information about which security or intelligence outfit arrested the journalist.

Milad Alavi, a reporter at Shargh, wrote in a tweet that Pour-Tabatabaie was arrested on Sunday morning but "called his sister at around 8 pm to let her know about his detention". However, due to the sudden disconnection of the phone he was unable to explain the reason for his arrest.

His arrest drew reactions of several journalists and activists in the country, including Abbas Abdi, a reformist commentator, who wrote on Twitter that the arrest of Pour-Tabatabaie "not only does not help to clear up the ambiguity about poisonings, but also makes it worse."

About 80 more schools were targeted by chemical attacks on Sunday with dozens of girls hospitalized.

The gas attacks, targeting girls' schools since November, intensified this week with hundreds more girls falling sick across Iran.

It is believed that the attacks are a coordinated effort to deter the young students from supporting ongoing unrest, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini.