DUBAI: An Iranian destroyer and support vessel are now sailing in the Atlantic Ocean in a rare mission far from the Islamic Republic, Iran's state TV reported on Thursday, without offering the vessels’ final destination.
The trip by the new domestically built destroyer Sahand and the intelligence-gathering vessel Makran comes amid U.S. media reports, citing anonymous American officials, saying the ships were bound for Venezuela. The Associated Press could not immediately confirm the ships' destination.
The vessels departed last month from Iran’s southern port of Bandar Abbas, said Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, Iran's deputy army chief. He described their mission as the Iranian navy's longest and most challenging voyage yet, without elaborating.
Iranian state TV released a short clip of the destroyer cruising through the Atlantic’s rough seas. The video likely was shot from the Makran, a converted commercial oil tanker with a mobile launch platform for helicopters.
“The Navy is improving its seafaring capacity and proving its long-term durability in unfavorable seas and the Atlantic’s unfavorable weather conditions,” Sayyari said, adding that the warships would not call at any country’s port during the mission.
Images from Maxar Technologies dated April 28 appear to show seven Iranian fast-attack craft typically associated with its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard on the deck of the Makran. Satellite images from Planet Labs Inc. suggest it left a port at Bandar Abbas sometime after April 29. It wasn’t immediately clear where the Makran and the destroyer are now.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price would not speculate on what the vessels were carrying, saying only “that if this is an effort to transfer weapons or otherwise to violate its international obligations we would be prepared to respond.”
“We have seen the press reports regarding this movement," Price said. “We’re prepared to leverage our applicable authorities, including sanctions, against any actor that enables Iran’s ongoing provision of weapons to violent partners into proxies."
The website Politico first reported in late May, citing anonymous officials, that the ships' final destination may be Venezuela. Iran maintains close ties to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and has shipped gasoline and other products to the country amid a U.S. sanctions campaign targeting fuel-starved Caracas. Venezuela is believed to have paid Iran, under U.S. sanctions of its own, for the shipments.
A top aide to Maduro has denied press reports that the ships will dock there. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive geopolitical issues.
During a news conference May 31, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh declined to say where the Makran was going.
“Iran is always present in international waters and it has this right based on international law and it can be present in international waters,” he said. “No country is able to violate this right, and I warn that no one makes miscalculations. Those who sit in glass houses should be careful.”
The fast-attack craft aboard the Makran are the type that the Guard uses in its tense encounters with U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf and its narrow mouth, the Strait of Hormuz. It's not immediately clear what Venezuela's plans would be for those ships.
“If the boats are delivered, they may form the core of an asymmetrical warfare force within Venezuela’s armed forces,” the U.S. Naval Institute said in an earlier published analysis. “This could be focused on disrupting shipping as a means of countering superior naval forces. Shipping routes to and from the Panama Canal are near the Venezuelan coast.”
Earlier this month, fires sank Iran's largest warship, the 207-meter (679-foot) Kharg, which was used to resupply other ships in the fleet at sea and conduct training exercises. Officials offered no cause for the blaze, which follows a series of mysterious explosions that began in 2019 targeting commercial ships in Mideast waterways.
The unusual voyage comes ahead of Iran's June 18 presidential election, which will see voters select a successor for the relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani.
Iran sends warships to Atlantic amid Venezuela concerns
https://arab.news/jj96h
Iran sends warships to Atlantic amid Venezuela concerns
- The trip by the new domestically built destroyer Sahand and the intelligence-gathering vessel Makran was announced on Thursday
- US media reports cited anonymous American officials as saying the ships were bound for Venezuela
Trump says US and Iranian officials will talk next week
- US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries
- Iran insists it will not give up its nuclear program
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: US President Donald Trump asserted on Wednesday that US and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace even as Tehran insisted it will not give up its nuclear program.
Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire that took hold Tuesday on the 12th day of the war, told reporters at a NATO summit that he wasn’t particularly interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, insisting that US strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. Earlier in the day, an Iranian official questioned whether the United States could be trusted after its weekend attack.
“We may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” Trump said. “The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done.”
Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of negotiations between the US and Iran had been scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled when Israel attacked Iran.
Earlier, Trump said the ceasefire was going “very well,” and added that Iran was “not going to have a bomb and they’re not going to enrich.”
Iran has insisted, however, that it will not give up its nuclear program. In a vote underscoring the tough path ahead, its parliament agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog that has monitored the program for years.
Ahead of the vote, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticized the IAEA for having “refused to even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities” that the US carried out on Sunday.
“For this reason, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran’s peaceful nuclear program will move forward at a faster pace,” Qalibaf told lawmakers.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he had written to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of their nuclear facilities. Among other things, Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the US strikes, and Grossi said his inspectors need to re-assess the country’s stockpiles.
“We need to return,” he said. “We need to engage.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country was part of the 2015 deal with Iran that restricted its nuclear program but began unraveling after Trump pulled the US out in his first term, said he hoped Tehran would come back to the table.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program was peaceful, and US intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.
Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged.
The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the US and Israeli strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” It did not give evidence to back up its claim.
The US strikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump said “completely and fully obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. When asked about a US intelligence report that found Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months, Trump scoffed and said it would at least take “years” to rebuild.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed that the strikes by US B-2 bombers using bunker-buster bombs had caused significant damage.
“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, while refusing to go into detail.
He seemed to suggest Iran might not shut out IAEA inspectors for good, noting that the bill before parliament only talks of suspending work with the agency, not ending it. He also insisted Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear energy program.
“Iran is determined to preserve that right under any circumstances,” he said.
Witkoff said on Fox News late on Tuesday that Israel and the US had achieved their objective of “the total destruction of the enrichment capacity” in Iran, and Iran’s prerequisite for talks — that Israel end its campaign — had been fulfilled.
“The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “No one’s shooting at each other. It’s over.”
‘It was obliterated’: Trump rejects doubts over Iran nuclear site attack
- President signals end of restrictions on sales of Iranian oil to China ‘to help the country rebuild’
- Iran-Israel war is over because both sides ‘exhausted’ * Plan for new talks with Tehran next week
THE HAGUE: President Donald Trump on Wednesday dismissed doubts about the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear program by US bomb strikes, and insisted that Tehran’s uranium enrichment facilities had been “completely and fully obliterated.”
Trump also said he believed the war between Iran and Israel was finished, as both sides were keen to end the fight. “I dealt with both and they’re both tired, exhausted,” he said.
Questions over the effectiveness of the strikes on Iran’s underground nuclear plant at Fordow emerged after a leaked preliminary US intelligence assessment, widely reported in US media, suggested that they had inflicted a marginal and temporary setback.
“This was a devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said. “They’re not going to be building bombs for a long time,” he said, and the strikes had set the program back by “decades.”
He also rejected suggestions that before the strikes Iran had moved its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which can be developed into fuel for a nuclear bomb.
Trump said the US had not given up its maximum pressure on Iran, but signaled a potential easing of restrictions on selling Iranian oil to China to help the country rebuild.
“They’re going to need money to put that country back into shape. We want to see that happen,” he said, a day after suggesting that China could continue to purchase Iranian oil. Talks with Iran were planned for next week, he said. “We may sign an agreement. I don’t know.”
The president was speaking at a NATO summit in The Hague, at which national leaders committed to spending 5 percent of their GDP on defense by 2035. The move follows years of complaints by Trump that the US pays a disproportionate amount to support the alliance.
He said: “We had a great victory here,” and he hoped the additional funds would be spent on military hardware made in the US.
The new spending target is a jump worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the current goal of 2 percent of GDP, although it will be measured differently.
Countries pledged to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on core defense such as troops and weapons, and 1.5 percent on broader defense-related measures such as cybersecurity, protecting pipelines and adapting roads and bridges to handle heavy military vehicles.
Israel assassinates money changer, monitors others for allegedly transferring money to Hezbollah
- Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee: ‘Al-Sadiq’ Currency Exchange, managed by Haytham Abdullah Bakri, serves as a funds storage and transfer mechanism for Hezbollah
- Adraee also posted photos of five other exchange centers in Lebanon that he accused of being companies that also finance Hezbollah
BEIRUT: The Israeli army on Wednesday claimed that Lebanese Haytham Abdullah Bakri, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday in the town of Kfar Dajjal in the Nabatiyeh governorate in southern Lebanon, was “the head of a currency exchange who operated with Hezbollah to transfer funds for Hezbollah terrorist activities.”
In a social media post, Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said: “The ‘Al-Sadiq’ Currency Exchange, managed by Bakri, serves as a funds storage and transfer mechanism for Hezbollah, for funds originating from the Iranian Quds Force.”
Adraee also posted photos of five other exchange centers in Lebanon that he accused of being companies that also finance Hezbollah, in what appeared to be a threat that they could be targeted similarly to Bakri.
The documented establishments include Al-Insaf Exchange under the management of Ali Hassan Shamas, and a currency house operated by Hassan Mohammed Hussein Ayyash.
The intelligence imagery also shows Yara Exchange, run by Mohammed Badr Barbir, alongside another operation managed by Ramez Mektef. Additionally, surveillance targeted Maliha Exchange, which operates under Hussein Shaheen’s management.
The post displayed photographs of these shops pinpointed on a map stretching from Beirut to Chtoura in the Bekaa and Mount Lebanon, including Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Adraee said that “these funds are used for military purposes including purchasing weapons, manufacturing means, and providing salaries to operatives, and are diverted for terrorist purposes and to finance the continuation of Hezbollah's terrorist activities.”
The Israeli forces announced the killing of Behnam Shahriari in Iran last weekend, identifying him as the head of Quds Force Unit 190 responsible for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars every year to Iranian proxy organizations. Israeli officials claim Shahriari oversaw sophisticated money transfer operations that funneled Quds Force resources to Hezbollah through a network of currency exchange firms spanning Turkey, Iraq, the UAE, and Lebanon. The killings of Shahriari and Bakri allegedly disrupted critical Iranian financing channels to the Lebanese militant group.
Dr. Louis Hobeika, an economic analyst, said to Arab News that Lebanon’s Central Bank monitors all international transfers, automatically freezing transactions above $10,000 to verify their purpose, origin, and destination.
“Money exchange operators in Lebanon operate under regulatory oversight without special exemptions based on transaction volume,” Hobeika said. “Yet Lebanon harbors financial channels that evade state monitoring and control. Legal and illegal operations sometimes blur together — a pattern visible beyond banking, including customs enforcement where contraband interdiction remains incomplete pending better scanning technology.”
Hobeika described Lebanon’s Syrian frontier as equally challenging, noting that financial flows previously moved through coordinated arrangements under Bashar Al-Assad’s government but now rely on individual smuggling operations.
Israel has repeatedly targeted Hezbollah’s Al-Qard Al-Hassan financial network, which it accuses of bankrolling the organization’s activities. During last year’s Israel-Hezbollah confrontations before November, Israeli airstrikes hit several branches of the institution, which operates a parallel banking system outside Lebanon’s regulated financial sector.
The Lebanese Ministry of Interior and Municipalities officially licensed the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association in 1987, describing its objective as “assisting individuals by providing short-term loans to help address certain social challenges.”
Following the ceasefire agreement reached at the end of November, the Israeli army placed Beirut International Airport under surveillance, blocking an Iranian plane from landing to “prevent the transfer of funds and weapons to Hezbollah.”
This measure coincided with a period in which Hezbollah faced a severe economic crisis, struggling to secure the funds needed to pay its members’ salaries and to provide shelter for thousands of families displaced by Israel’s systematic destruction of villages along the southern border, as well as hundreds of residential buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley.
In February, Hezbollah called on the government to “revoke its decision to prevent (the) Iranian plane from landing at Beirut Airport and to take serious measures to stop the Israeli enemy from imposing its orders and violating national sovereignty.”
Iran is estimated to provide Hezbollah with up to $700 million a year, according to a US State Department report issued in 2022.
In a 2016 speech, the former secretary-general of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, said: “Our budget, salaries, expenses, food, water, weapons, and missiles are provided by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
He also confirmed in a 2021 speech that Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association has provided $3.7 billion in loans to 1.8 million people in Lebanon since its founding in the 1980s, with approximately 300,000 individuals obtaining loans during that period.
In May, the US State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the disruption of Hezbollah’s financial networks operating in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
Qatari emir visits Joint Operations Command, briefed on Iranian missile interception
- Sheikh Tamim toured the headquarters to review systems used for monitoring, command and control
- A briefing was provided on Monday’s interception of missile attack targeting Al-Udeid Air Base
LONDON: Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani visited the Joint Operations Command of the armed forces in the Al-Mazrouah area on Wednesday.
Sheikh Tamim toured the headquarters to review the systems utilized for monitoring as well as command and control, Qatar News Agency reported.
During the visit, a briefing was provided regarding the interception of a missile attack targeting Al-Udeid Air Base, which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps launched on Monday evening.
The Joint Operations Command highlighted the precautionary measures implemented by the armed forces, emphasizing their efficiency and readiness to defend Qatar.
Sheikh Tamim expressed his gratitude and appreciation to everyone working in the military and security sectors. He was accompanied by Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman bin Hassan Al-Thani, Qatar’s deputy prime minister and minister of state for defense affairs, along with several senior military and security commanders.
Trump declares ‘victory for everybody’ with Iran's nuclear sites destroyed
- Trump shrugs off US intelligence assessment saying Iran’s nuclear weapon path set back by just months
- Speaking at NATO summit, US president says he is confident Tehran will now pursue diplomatic path
THE HAGUE/TEL AVIV/ISTANBUL: US President Donald Trump reveled in the swift end to war between Iran and Israel, saying he now expected a relationship with Tehran that would preclude rebuilding its nuclear program despite uncertainty over damage inflicted by US strikes.
As exhausted and anxious Iranians and Israelis both sought to resume normal life after the most intense confrontation ever between the two foes, Iran’s president suggested that the war could lead to reforms at home.
Trump, speaking in The Hague where he attended a NATO summit on Wednesday, said his decision to join Israel’s attacks by targeting Iranian nuclear sites with huge bunker-busting bombs had ended the war, calling it “a victory for everybody.”
He shrugged off an initial assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency that Iran’s path to building a nuclear weapon may have been set back only by months, saying the findings were “inconclusive” and he believed the sites had been destroyed.
“It was very severe. It was obliteration,” he said.
He was confident Tehran would not try to rebuild its nuclear sites and would instead pursue a diplomatic path toward reconciliation, he said.
“I’ll tell you, the last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now. They want to recover,” he said.
If Iran tried to rebuild its nuclear program, “We won’t let that happen. Number one, militarily we won’t,” he said, adding that he thought “we’ll end up having something of a relationship with Iran” to resolve the issue.
Israel’s bombing campaign, launched with a surprise attack on June 13, wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military leadership and killed its leading nuclear scientists. Iran responded with missiles that pierced Israel’s defenses in large numbers for the first time.
Iranian authorities said 610 people were killed and nearly 5,000 injured in Iran, where the extent of the damage could not be independently confirmed because of tight restrictions on media. Twenty-eight people were killed in Israel.
Both Iran and Israel declared victory: Israel claiming to have achieved its goals of destroying Iran’s nuclear sites and missiles, and Iran claiming to have forced the end of the war by penetrating Israeli defenses with its retaliation.
But Israel’s demonstration that it could target Iran’s senior leadership seemingly at will poses perhaps the biggest challenge ever for Iran’s clerical rulers, at a critical juncture when they must find a successor for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 86 and in power for 36 years.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative moderate elected last year in a challenge to years of dominance by hard-liners, said the atmosphere of national solidarity during the Israeli attacks would spur domestic reform.
“This war and the empathy that it fostered between the people and officials is an opportunity to change the outlook of management and the behavior of officials so that they can create unity,” he said in a statement carried by state media.
Still, Iran’s authorities moved swiftly to demonstrate their control. The judiciary announced the execution of three men on Wednesday convicted of collaborating with Israel’s Mossad spy agency and smuggling equipment used in an assassination. Iran had arrested 700 people accused of ties with Israel during the conflict, the state-affiliated Nournews reported.
During the war, both Netanyahu and Trump publicly suggested that it could end with the toppling of Iran’s entire system of clerical rule, established in its 1979 revolution.
But after the ceasefire, Trump said he did not want to see “regime change” in Iran, which he said would bring chaos at a time when he wanted the situation to settle down.
A rapprochement between Tehran and the West would still require a deal governing Iran’s long-term nuclear ambitions in return for lifting US and international sanctions. Iran has always denied seeking an atomic weapon, which Western countries have accused it of pursuing for decades.
The head of the UN’s IAEA nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said his top priority was ensuring international inspectors could return to Iran’s nuclear sites, dismissing what he called the “hourglass approach” of trying to assess the damage in terms of the months it would take Iran to rebuild.
“In any case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” he said.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said late on Tuesday that talks between the United States and Iran were “promising” and Washington was hopeful for “a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran.”
Iran’s parliament approved a bill on Wednesday to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, state-affiliated news outlet Nournews reported, though it said such a move would require approval of Iran’s top security body.
Iranian military chief Shadmani dies of wounds from Israeli strikes
The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards command center, Ali Shadmani, died of wounds sustained during Israel's military strikes on the country, Iranian state media said on Wednesday.
Israel's armed forces had said on June 17 that it killed Shadmani, who it identified as Iran’s wartime chief of staff and most senior military commander.
Trump says US and Iranian officials will talk next week
US President Donald Trump asserted on Wednesday that US and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace even as Tehran insisted it will not give up its nuclear program.
Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire that took hold Tuesday on the 12th day of the war, told reporters at a NATO summit that he wasn’t particularly interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, insisting that US strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. Earlier in the day, an Iranian official questioned whether the United States could be trusted after its weekend attack.
“We may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” Trump said. “The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done.”
Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries.
Qatari emir briefed on Iranian missile interception
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani visited the Joint Operations Command of the armed forces in the Al-Mazrouah area on Wednesday.
Sheikh Tamim toured the headquarters to review the systems utilized for monitoring as well as command and control, Qatar News Agency reported.
During the visit, a briefing was provided regarding the interception of a missile attack targeting Al-Udeid Air Base, which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps launched on Monday evening.
The Joint Operations Command highlighted the precautionary measures implemented by the armed forces, emphasizing their efficiency and readiness to defend Qatar.
Israel killed at least 14 scientists in attack on Iran’s nuclear know-how
Israel’s tally of the war damage it wrought on Iran includes the targeted killings of at least 14 scientists, an unprecedented attack on the brains behind Iran’s nuclear program that outside experts say can only set it back, not stop it.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Israel’s ambassador to France said the killings will make it “almost” impossible for Iran to build weapons from whatever nuclear infrastructure and material may have survived nearly two weeks of Israeli airstrikes and massive bunker-busting bombs dropped by US stealth bombers.
“The fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the program by a number of years, by quite a number of years,” Ambassador Joshua Zarka said.
But nuclear analysts say Iran has other scientists who can take their place.
Meeting Trump, Turkiye’s Erdogan hails Iran-Israel truce
Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed the Iran-Israel ceasefire and urged “close dialogue” to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as he held talks with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of a NATO summit late Tuesday.
The Turkish president “expressed his satisfaction with the ceasefire achieved between Israel and Iran through President Trump’s efforts, hoping it would be permanent,” his office said.
Erdogan also stressed the need for Ankara and Washington to work closely to end the war in Gaza and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Netanyahu claims Iran will not have a nuclear weapon
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a “historic victory” against Iran despite a US intelligence report concluding that American strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear program by just a few months.
In an address to the nation after the ceasefire announcement, Netanyahu said “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”
“We have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project,” he said. “And if anyone in Iran tries to rebuild it, we will act with the same determination, with the same intensity, to foil any attempt.”
Israel had said its bombing campaign, which began on June 13, was aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, an ambition Tehran has consistently denied.
US intel says strikes did not destroy Iran nuclear program
A classified preliminary US intelligence report has concluded that American strikes on Iran set back Tehran’s nuclear program by just a few months — rather than destroying it as claimed by President Donald Trump.
US media on Tuesday cited people familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency findings as saying the weekend strikes did not fully eliminate Iran’s centrifuges or stockpile of enriched uranium.
The strikes sealed off entrances to some facilities without destroying underground buildings, according to the report.
White House Press Secretary Karline Leavitt confirmed the authenticity of the assessment but said it was “flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked.”
