Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his Venezuelan counterpart YvánGil Pinto discussed bilateral ties and recent US military activity in the Caribbean in a phone call, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.
Gil said Venezuela faced “illegal threats” from Washington and thanked Tehran for what he called its principled support of the UN Charter and respect for national sovereignty, according to a readout of the call released by Iranian state media.
He told Araghchi that “the government and people of Venezuela will firmly defend their independence, sovereignty and right to self-determination,” and voiced hope that BRICS members and Latin American states would condemn US actions.
Araghchi strongly condemned what he described as unilateral and bullying measures by the United States, calling them a “clear violation” of the UN Charter and a threat to global peace and security.
He expressed Iran’s solidarity with Venezuela “in the face of US coercion.”
The call came as US President Donald Trump warned this week that Venezuelan jets flying near US naval vessels would be shot down if they posed a threat, after Washington said Venezuelan aircraft had approached an American ship for the second time in two days.
US officials said the incidents followed a strike on a Venezuela-linked vessel they described as a “drug-carrying boat,” which left 11 people dead.
Trump has stepped up anti-drug-trafficking operations in Latin America, sending additional naval assets and thousands of personnel to the region.
CNN, citing multiple sources, reported on Friday that the Trump administration is weighing strikes against drug trafficking groups inside Venezuela.
He told reporters the deployment was to keep the US “strong on drugs,” while Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Washington of seeking regime change.
Maduro urged the United States to “abandon its plan of violent regime change in Venezuela and in all of Latin America,” and called for respect for sovereignty and independence.
“I respect Trump. None of the differences we’ve had can lead to a military conflict,” Maduro said, adding that “Venezuela has always been willing to talk, to engage in dialogue.”
Speaking to Channel 12, Cohen said: “I always wanted to be proactive, identify threats, neutralize them. But the prevailing approach was avoidance—‘Oh, what will happen next?’ For example, I had a full plan to eliminate Qassem Soleimani in Syria. Everything was ready—intelligence, surveillance, logistics—but I was told I couldn’t carry it out because it would spark a war with Iran.”
During the interview, aired Saturday evening, he recalled then US President Donald Trump accusing Netanyahu of cowardice for backing out of the strike.
Cohen said Israeli reluctance “wasn’t because of the prime minister -- but because [Netanyahu] accepted the army and military intelligence’s position,” referring to then chief of staff Aviv Kohavi.
He recalled a security meeting in which he proposed that the IDF strike a site linked to Qassem Soleimani that the military had itself labeled a serious strategic threat, without giving a date. “The chief of staff opposed me, right there,” he said. “I told the prime minister: ‘Instruct him.’ But no directive was given.”
Cohen said Netanyahu sided with the generals, a stance he described as a “policy of consequences.”
Asked if the generals intimidated the premier, he said: “Absolutely.”
On June 13, Israel launched surprise attacks on Iran, killing many senior military leaders and nuclear experts, and triggering a 12-day war that brought destruction to both sides.
After Cohen’s remarks were aired Saturday evening, Kohavi issued a statement saying the IDF had opposed a different operation proposed by Cohen to kill Soleimani, and had backed what proved to be a successful operation.
Asked if Netanyahu might have acted differently in another environment, Cohen replied: “Yes, absolutely.”
Under Cohen's tenure, from 2016-2021, Operation House of Cards saw Israel target dozens of Iranian targets in Syria in 2018.
During his Saturday interview, Cohen said one of his major successes was acquiring Iran’s nuclear archive.
He said he devised the “exploding beepers” tactic used against Hezbollah last year, when pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to the Iran-backed group were rigged to detonate simultaneously, killing and wounding hundreds of its fighters across Lebanon.
“I’m the father of the concept," the long-time agent said. "In 2004, I told then-Mossad chief Meir Dagan I wanted a special operations center that would also handle equipment sales.”
Haghshenas said restoring the wetland requires $300 million and called for measures to stop industrial, agricultural and household wastewater from flowing into it.
He warned that decades of untreated sewage, sediment and pollution, compounded by falling Caspian water levels, have left the wetland on the brink of ecological collapse.
The wetland, registered under the international Ramsar Convention in 1975, is a critical habitat for fish, birds and local livelihoods.
Environmental officials said invasive plants, shrinking water flow and mismanagement have deepened the crisis, but stressed that “Anzali is not dead and can recover” if pollution is curbed and water retained.
In August, a senior Iranian environment official warned that Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran, once the Middle East’s largest, will completely dry up by the end of summer if current conditions persist.
“The lake's water level on August 1, 2025, was 1,269.74 meters, its area had shrunk to 581 square kilometers, and its volume was down to about half a billion cubic meters,” said Ahmadreza Lahijanzadeh, deputy for marine and wetland affairs at Iran’s Department of Environment.
