Khamenei Praises ‘Revolutionary Parliament’ For Tough Nuclear Bill

From the US to China, the young ruler is trying to show his force in a region where power plays are constantly shifting. Most recently, that power play seems to be blowing up a little, with the UAE’s President Mohammed Bin Zayed shunning the recent Arab League Summit in Saudi, following MBS boycotting a meeting in January of GCC heads of state amidst clashes over policy including oil sales and the Yemen war, as the two vie for GCC hegemony.

But it is Saudi’s dancing between Iran and Israel which is causing all eyes to be on Riyadh. Just weeks after the detente between Saudi and Iran, breaking years of tension between the two regional powers, it appears MBS has received a call from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. Such a move would have been followed by a torrent of abuse from Iran had this happened just weeks earlier, but as things are shifting in MBS’s favor, Iran has largely remained quiet.

At the Arab League Summit, Qatar’s ruling Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani walked out before a speech given by the newly readmitted Bashar al-Assad in a stand against the Syrian dictator. While Al-Thani welcomes warming ties with Saudi and Qatar’s Gulf neighbors after the recent lifting of the embargo, the gas-rich state still flexed its muscles to show Riyadh is not calling the shots in Qatar’s regional relations.

Confrontation with America under the Biden administration, stronger alignment with China, expanding relations with Russia and inviting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to the Arab League meeting, show MBS playing an interesting game on the global stage for the world’s largest oil exporter.

Iran’s Etemad newspaper wrote of the shifting sands: “From the point of view of some experts, this action of bin Salman is reminiscent of the policy of reducing problems with all regional and international parties to zero, while others consider it to be stepping on the edge of an abyss that can destroy all plans even with one step or one wrong behavior.”

Warning of the risks at stake, moving between some of the world’s biggest rivals, Etemad said of MBS: “Whether in the domestic dimension or in the regional and international arenas … he loves to walk in minefields and play with contradictions.”

While the Saudi media describe his behavior as the creation of a new Arab order, MBS the flag bearer of the beginning of a new chapter in the region and the man to see an end to its conflicts, others see his position between democracies and dictatorships as a major gamble.

The UAE has long shown itself as a diplomatic kingmaker in the region, the first country to sign the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, it also made peace with Iran last year, long before Saudi. Meanwhile, Qatar and Egypt also pride themselves as long-standing regional peacemakers and want their share of the peace-pie before they hand the reins to MBS. It is unlikely that any of these nations will be happy to see MBS call the shots, in spite of regional frustrations with the Biden administration and the growing influence of Russia and China, the latter of which played a significant role in the Saudi-Iran detente.

“It is not believed that Muhammad bin Salman has the ability to play on several ropes for a long time,” wrote Etemad. 

MBS is still seen by the West as a brutal dictator responsible for the likes of mass displacement as whole tribes are removed to make way for the NEOM development and executions in spite of a sharp PR campaign to suggest the country is undergoing major reform and opening up to the world with a raft of jaw-dropping mega projects. 

The Red Crescent Society's Control and Coordination Center dispatched a team to the industrial town 100 kilometers west of Tehran.

It is the latest major incident to hit Iran's industrial workers. On Saturday, seventeen people were injured, and several were taken to hospital after a large fire engulfed a warehouse in southern Tehran.

Last month another large blaze broke out across three warehouses of a home appliances manufacturer in the northeastern city of Mashhad. The building belonged to Electrosteel, a large and well-known company in Iran.

There have been a number of explosions and fires near Iran’s military, nuclear and industrial facilities in recent years.

On January 28, a huge fire erupted at an Iranian military industry factory following a suspected drone strike in the central city of Esfahan.

Iran blamed Israel for the drone attack, vowing revenge.

Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, chief of Israel's armed forces, warned: "Iran has advanced with uranium enrichment further than ever before ... There are negative developments on the horizon that could bring about (military) action.”

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, an international security forum, Halevi said global efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear activity have so far been in vain.

An Associated Press report Monday showed the regime is building a deep underground nuclear facility near the Zagros Mountains in central Iran, close to the Natanz nuclear site, with experts claiming development “is likely beyond the range of a last-ditch US weapon designed to destroy such sites."

Completion of such a facility “would be a nightmare scenario that risks igniting a new escalatory spiral,” warned Kelsey Davenport, the director of nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

“Given how close Iran is to a bomb, it has very little room to ratchet up its program without tripping US and Israeli red lines. So at this point, any further escalation increases the risk of conflict,” Davenport added, reiterating worries that Iran is producing uranium close to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, officially known as the JCPOA.

Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told the Herzliya Conference that while the new underground site would be challenging to attack, ”there is nowhere that cannot be reached."

Experts are divided over whether Israel has the military might to deal lasting damage to Iranian nuclear facilities that are distant, dispersed and defended, leading to speculations that Israel might use countries on Iran's borders – such as Azerbaijan -- as springboards for strikes.

Deputy Azeri Foreign Minister Fariz Rzayev, who spoke at the same conference, said "We refrain from interfering in the disputes or problems (of other countries), including by allowing or giving our territory for some operations or adventures," denying previous reports about preparing an airfield to assist Israel during an attack on the Islamic Republic.

Halevi, Israel’s top general, said elsewhere in his speech that "We have capabilities, and others also have capabilities,” in an apparent allusion to the military clout of Israel's US ally which this month posted pictures of a powerful bomb designed to penetrate and destroy underground facilities.

The US Air Force released rare images of the weapon, the GBU-57, known as the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction located in well protected facilities. However, it immediately took the photos down because they revealed sensitive details about the weapon’s composition and punch.

According to Rahul Udoshi, a senior weapons analyst at open-source intelligence firm Janes, the latest photos revealed stenciling on the bombs that listed their weight as 12,300 kilograms (27,125 pounds). It also described the bomb as carrying a mix of AFX-757 — a standard explosive — and PBXN-114, a relatively new explosive compound. The weight of the bomb, coming from its thick steel frame, allows the explosives to chew through concrete and soil before exploding.

This is not the first time reports surface about Iran building a vast tunnel network near Natanz, purportedly able to withstand cyberattacks and bunker-penetrating bombs. 

Last year, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Behrouz Kamalvandi, reacted to a report by the New York Times revealing underground work, claiming Iran had notified the UN nuclear agency of its plan to relocate the activities of the Iran Centrifuge Technology Company (TESA) complex in Karaj to the city of Natanz.

He claimed the move aimed to prevent the recurrence of attacks, referring to a recent drone attack at the TESA complex near Karaj which manufactures parts for centrifuges.

Over the years, a series of attacks has seemed to slow Iran’s nuclear activities. In 2010, the Natanz uranium enrichment facility suffered serious damage following a major cyber-attack involving the Stuxnet virus. Three years later, the Fordow enrichment site was rocked by an explosion. More recently, in July 2020, a centrifuge assembly facility was hit by an explosion and in April 2021 an explosion at the enrichment plant caused a power outage that reportedly damaged thousands of centrifuges.

The intelligence ministry said that individuals working in the Iranian government were collecting information for the foreign spy agency on officials traveling abroad.

The statement does not name any country or any suspects, nor identify people claimed to have been arrested.

According to the intelligence ministry, the foreign country was trying to collect information on Iranian officials who had “important information in sensitive institutions,” and were traveling abroad.

Iran’s intelligence organizations regularly claim the discovery of spy networks and saboteurs in the country, but there is rarely any follow-up information. Usually, no names or details are provided, and no news emerges about likely trials and convictions.

There have been numerous instances of sabotage and infiltration in Iran in recent years, with serious clandestine attacks on nuclear, military and important economic targets. Iranian intelligence was badly discredited when two large sabotage attacks took place in 2020 and 2021 against its most important nuclear facility in Natanz. A few key military and intelligence officials have also been assassinated.

The incidents are largely attributed to Israel, although Israeli officials have never officially taken responsibility.

The statement came one day after the long-time secretary of Iran’s national security council, Ali Shamkhani, was pushed out of his post. Earlier this year, Alireza Akbari, an associate of his was hanged as an alleged British spy.

“Transferring the residents of Tabriz to another place requires 500 billion dollars while the cost of reviving the lake is about one billion dollars,” Isa Kalantari said, explaining that the salt dust would be unbearable for residents in Tabriz and its surrounding cities.

Last year, he had also warned that if the lake is not restored, it will have security consequences, causing a flood of millions of displaced citizens.

Experts say groundwater extraction and using the water of the once bountiful Zarrineh Rud − which feeds Lake Urmia − for irrigating apple trees have both contributed to the lake shrinking by nearly 95 percent in volume over the past 20 years. In 2021 alone, more than 100,000 tons of apples of the province’s production went to waste.

Urmia, which is the largest lake in Iran and the sixth largest salt lake in the world, began shrinking in the mid-1980s and was in danger of disappearing altogether until recovery plans began to be implemented in 2014.

Japan, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) allocated nearly ten billion dollars to save the lake. It is not clear whether or how the earmarked budget was spent.