Iran agrees to ship missiles, more drones to Russia, defying the West: Sources

Engine of an unmanned aerial vehicle, what Ukrainian authorities consider to be an Iranian made suicide drone Shahed-136, are seen found in Kharkiv, Ukraine. (File/Reuters)
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Updated 18 October 2022
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Iran agrees to ship missiles, more drones to Russia, defying the West: Sources

  • “Where they are being used is not the seller’s issue. We do not take sides in the Ukraine crisis like the West,” a diplomat said
  • Ukraine has reported a spate of Russian attacks using Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks

LONDON: Iran has promised to provide Russia with surface to surface missiles, in addition to more drones, two senior Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats told Reuters, a move that is likely to infuriate the United States and other Western powers.
A deal was agreed on Oct. 6 when Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, two senior officials from Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards and an official from the Supreme National Security Council visited Moscow for talks with Russia about the delivery of the weapons.
“The Russians had asked for more drones and those Iranian ballistic missiles with improved accuracy, particularly the Fateh and Zolfaghar missiles family,” said one of the Iranian diplomats, who was briefed about the trip.
A Western official briefed on the matter confirmed it, saying there was an agreement in place between Iran and Russia to provide surface-to-surface short range ballistic missiles, including the Zolfaghar.
The Iranian diplomat rejected assertions by Western officials that such transfers breach a 2015 UN Security Council resolution.
“Where they are being used is not the seller’s issue. We do not take sides in the Ukraine crisis like the West. We want an end to the crisis through diplomatic means,” the diplomat said.
Ukraine has reported a spate of Russian attacks using Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks. Iran has denied supplying the drones to Russia, while the Kremlin on Tuesday denied its forces had used Iranian drones to attack Ukraine.
Asked if Russia had used Iranian drones in its campaign in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin did not have any information about their use.
“Russian equipment with Russian nomenclature is used,” he said. “All further questions should be directed to the Defense Ministry.”
The ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The appearance of Iranian missiles in addition to drones in Moscow’s arsenal in the war with Ukraine would raise tensions between Iran and the United States and other Western powers.
Shipment “soon, very soon”
The US State Department assessed that Iranian drones were used on Monday in a morning rush hour attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, a US official said. White House spokesperson Karinne Jean-Pierre also accused Tehran of lying when it said Iranian drones are not being used by Russia in Ukraine.
A European diplomat said it was his country’s assessment that Russia was finding it more difficult to produce weaponry for itself given the sanctions on its industrial sector and so was turning to imports from partners like Iran and North Korea.
“Drones and missiles are a logical next step,” said the European diplomat.
Asked about sales of Iranian surface-to-surface missiles to Russia, a senior US military official said: “I don’t have anything to provide at this time in terms of whether or not that is accurate at this point.”
Iran’s rulers are also under pressure from nationwide demonstrations which were ignited by the death in custody of a 22-year-old woman detained for “inappropriate attire.”
Several European Union states on Monday called for sanctions on Iran over its supply of drones to Russia, as the bloc agreed a separate set of sanctions over Tehran’s crackdown on unrest.
“They (Russians) wanted to buy hundreds of our missiles, even mid-range ones, but we told them that we can ship soon a few hundred of their demanded Zolfaghar and Fateh 110 short-range, surface to surface missiles,” said one of the security officials.
“I cannot give you the exact time, but soon, very soon those will be shipped in 2 to three shipments.”
An Eastern European official tracking Russia’s weapons activity said it was their understanding that this arms deal was happening, although he had no specific evidence to back it up. The official said that a decision had been taken by the Iranian and Russian leaders to proceed with the transfer.
Moscow had specifically asked for surface to surface short-range Fateh 110 and Zolfaghar missiles, and the shipment will happen in a maximum of 10 days, said another Iranian diplomat.
Attack drones
The stakes are high for Iran, which has been negotiating with Western states to revive a 2015 deal that would ease sanctions on Tehran in return for limits on its nuclear work.
The talks have deadlocked, and any disputes between Tehran and Western powers over arms sales to Russia or Iran’s crackdown on the unrest could weaken efforts to seal an accord.
The United States agrees with British and French assessments that Iran supplying drones to Russia would violate a UN Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 deal, US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on Monday.
The Western official, who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the matter, said that like the drones, missile transfers would also violate UN resolution 2231.
Several senior Iranian officials are outraged about “unjust” planned sanctions on Iran over its arms shipments to Russia, said the second diplomat.
In September, Tehran had refused a request by President Vladimir Putin for the supply of Iran’s sophisticated Arash 2 long-range attack drones, three Iranian officials told Reuters.
When asked the reason for the refusal, one of the officials cited several issues including “some technical problems.”
“Also the (Revolutionary) Guards’ commanders were worried that if Russia uses this Arash 2 drone in Ukraine, Americans may have access to our technology.”


Palestinians confront a landscape of destruction in Gaza’s ‘ghost towns’

Updated 3 sec ago
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Palestinians confront a landscape of destruction in Gaza’s ‘ghost towns’

“As you can see, it became a ghost town,” said Hussein Barakat, 38, whose home in the southern city of Rafah was flattened
Critics say Israel has waged a campaign of scorched earth to destroy the fabric of life in Gaza

RAFAH: Palestinians in Gaza are confronting an apocalyptic landscape of devastation after a ceasefire paused more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Across the tiny coastal enclave, where built-up refugee camps are interspersed between cities, drone footage captured by The Associated Press shows mounds of rubble stretching as far as the eye can see — remnants of the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Hamas in their blood-ridden history.
“As you can see, it became a ghost town,” said Hussein Barakat, 38, whose home in the southern city of Rafah was flattened. “There is nothing,” he said, as he sat drinking coffee on a brown armchair perched on the rubble of his three-story home, in a surreal scene.
Critics say Israel has waged a campaign of scorched earth to destroy the fabric of life in Gaza, accusations that are being considered in two global courts, including the crime of genocide. Israel denies those charges and says its military has been fighting a complex battle in dense urban areas and that it tries to avoid causing undue harm to civilians and their infrastructure.
Military experts say the reality is complicated.
“For a campaign of this duration, which is a year’s worth of fighting in a heavily urban environment where you have an adversary that is hiding in among that environment, then you would expect an extremely high level of damage,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think-tank.
Savill said that it was difficult to draw a broad conclusion about the nature of Israel’s campaign. To do so, he said, would require each strike and operation to be assessed to determine whether they adhered to the laws of armed conflict and whether all were proportional, but he did not think the scorched earth description was accurate.
International rights groups. including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, view the vast destruction as part of a broader pattern of extermination and genocide directed at Palestinians in Gaza, a charge Israel denies. The groups dispute Israel’s stance that the destruction was a result of military activity.
Human Rights Watch, in a November report accusing Israel of crimes against humanity, said “the destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.”
From a fierce air campaign during the first weeks of the war, to a ground invasion that sent thousands of troops in on tanks, the Israeli response to a Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, has ground down much of the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, displacing 90 percent of its population. The brilliant color of pre-war life has faded into a monotone cement gray that dominates the territory. It could take decades, if not more, to rebuild.
Airstrikes throughout the war toppled buildings and other structures said to be housing militants. But the destruction intensified with the ground forces, who fought Hamas fighters in close combat in dense areas.
If militants were seen firing from an apartment building near a troop maneuver, forces might take the entire building down to thwart the threat. Tank tracks chewed up paved roads, leaving dusty stretches of earth in their wake.
The military’s engineering corps was tasked with using bulldozers to clear routes, downing buildings seen as threats, and blowing up Hamas’ underground tunnel network.
Experts say the operations to neutralize tunnels were extremely destructive to surface infrastructure. For example, if a 1.5-kilometer (1-mile) long tunnel was blown up by Israeli forces, it would not spare homes or buildings above, said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli army intelligence officer.
“If (the tunnel) passes under an urban area, it all gets destroyed,” he said. “There’s no other way to destroy a tunnel.”
Cemeteries, schools, hospitals and more were targeted and destroyed, he said, because Hamas was using these for military purposes. Secondary blasts from Hamas explosives inside these buildings could worsen the damage.
The way Israel has repeatedly returned to areas it said were under its control, only to have militants overrun it again, has exacerbated the destruction, Savill said.
That’s evident especially in northern Gaza, where Israel launched a new campaign in early October that almost obliterated Jabaliya, a built up, urban refugee camp. Jabaliya is home to the descendants of Palestinians who fled, or were forced to flee, during the war that led to Israel‘s creation in 1948. Milshtein said Israel’s dismantling of the tunnel network is also to blame for the destruction there.
But the destruction was not only caused from strikes on targets. Israel also carved out a buffer zone about a kilometer inside Gaza from its border with Israel, as well as within the Netzarim corridor that bisects north Gaza from the south, and along the Philadelphi Corridor, a stretch of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Vast swaths in these areas were leveled.
Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli general, said the buffer zones were an operational necessity meant to carve out secure plots of land for Israeli forces. He denied Israel had cleared civilian areas indiscriminately.
The destruction, like the civilian death toll in Gaza, has raised accusations that Israel committed war crimes, which it denies. The decisions the military made in choosing what to topple, and why, are an important factor in that debate.
“The second militants move into a building and start using it to fire on you, you start making a calculation about whether or not you can strike,” Savill said. Downing the building, he said, “still needs to be necessary.”

Lebanese social entrepreneur among Schwab Foundation awardees at WEF

Updated 56 min 53 sec ago
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Lebanese social entrepreneur among Schwab Foundation awardees at WEF

  • Aline Sara, co-founder of NaTakallam (Arabic for “we speak”), has been enabling refugees and other conflict-affected people to earn an income online

DUBAI: The co-founder of an online platform that hires refugees and displaced persons as online tutors, teachers and translators was among 18 recipients of the 2025 Schwab Foundation Award announced on the first day of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos.

Aline Sara, co-founder of NaTakallam (Arabic for “we speak”), has been enabling refugees and other conflict-affected people to earn an income online and connect them with people around the world through language.

In this context, the social enterprise “disrupts the conventional approach to humanitarian aid” and uses the gig economy to promote sustainable solutions to major crises, according to the Schwab Foundation’s official statement.

Although the idea was inspired by the Syrian refugee crisis, Sara, a Lebanese citizen, has expanded the platform to serve displaced people around the world, reaching as far as Venezuela, Burundi and Yemen.

Launched with an initial offer of online Arabic conversation classes, NaTakallam proposes services ranging from translation, interpretation and transcription to an Arabic curriculum in partnership with Cornell University in the US. Other languages include Persian and Spanish to address the pressing needs of Venezuelan refugees.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the Motsepe Foundation, awarded 18 social entrepreuners from 15 organizations whose groundbreaking solutions address urgent issues and drive positive change around the world.

“This year’s awardees are addressing health disparities from the United States to Zambia, creating income opportunities for displaced individuals, combatting deforestation in Central and West Africa, and improving the lives of vulnerable communities in India and beyond,” the foundation said in a statement.

The entrepreneurs were rewarded based on their business, social development and environmental models that are helping to build a more equitable and sustainable world.

According to the WEF, social entrepreneurship and innovation are gaining momentum worldwide, with more than 10 million social enterprises creating 200 million jobs and generating $2 trillion annually.

Despite their significant economic contribution and commitment to sustainable and inclusive development, social enterprises face a $1.1 trillion funding need.

At the Annual Meeting 2025, the Schwab Foundation aims to spotlight social entrepreneurs and innovators who are already leading the way with successful and innovative business models and, ultimately, help advance these solutions at scale to reach more of the world’s people.

Francois Bonnici, director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, said: “Our world is grappling with instability, polarization and disenfranchisement while facing extreme, unpredictable weather events and disasters. It is also undergoing a radical transformation with both the green and digital transitions.

“Although this comes with economic opportunity, it also risks exacerbating existing inequalities or creating new ones,” he said. “In the face of these significant challenges, the need for bold and innovative solutions has never been more pressing. The work of social entrepreneurs and innovators is not just important, it is essential.”
 


Trump expected to bring peace to Ukraine, though picture unclear on Middle East: WEF panel

Updated 21 January 2025
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Trump expected to bring peace to Ukraine, though picture unclear on Middle East: WEF panel

  • Expert predicts war in Ukraine would end within the next six months
  • Despite bringing a ceasefire in Gaza, Trump’s presidency does not signal guaranteed peace in Palestine, warn analysts

DUBAI: Donald Trump’s US presidency will likely bring peace in Ukraine even if the future of the Middle East remains unclear, panelists at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos said on Tuesday.

The annual meetings, which got into full swing on Tuesday, comes a day after Trump was sworn in for his second term as the 47th US president, marking perhaps the greatest political comeback in American history.

In one of the earliest sessions, a panel of political analysts and experts shared their “early thoughts” on Trump’s actions on his first day back in office as speculation rises about the implications of his presidency on the domestic and international fronts.

Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, predicted the war in Ukraine would end within the next six months.

“If you look at [Trump’s] inaugural speech and the press conference, he wants to be not only a deal maker, but an international deal maker who’s a peacemaker,” said Allison, adding the new president would leverage his power to strike a deal with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky or starve Kyiv of Washington’s military aid.

However, prospects of peace seem unclear in the Middle East, where a major paradigm shift took place last year with the decline of Iran and its proxies, as well as the new governments that rose to power in Syria and Lebanon.

Trump took credit for implementing a fragile ceasefire in Gaza after 14 months of negotiations.

“You can see a paradigm shift without peace. Israel has had a strategic problem since the 1940s (in) that it wins wars but cannot get to a stable peaceful arrangement. And I think that that remains the case,” said Walter Mead, Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute.

He noted the decline of the “Iranian challenge” as the only factor destabilizing the Middle East was no guarantee of lasting peace in the Middle East.

“Peace in the Middle East perhaps remains a beautiful but maybe distant dream,” warned Mead.

Despite bringing a ceasefire in Gaza, Trump’s presidency does not signal guaranteed peace in Palestine given his desire to expand the Abraham Accords and resume pressure on Tehran.

Panelists warned of the consequences of Trump’s return to power.

Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, warned against treating Trump as “just another president” given his victory despite impeachments and criminal indictments.

“It’s a very unusual time to have an individual that is in no way concerned about, or constrained by, rule of law,” said Bremmer, referring to the global power that Trump has amassed in light of America’s post-COVID-19 economic growth and tech dominance, combined with the weakening of Washington’s adversaries like China, Russia and Iran.

“To understand what Trump will do is to understand who pays him.”

In his first two days in office, Trump has already taken major decisions that include withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement on climate change for the second time.

Although panelists signaled optimism towards his domestic economic policies, they disagreed on Washington’s projected relationship with China during his tenure.

“I think that we are heading towards a trade war and towards a more strategic decoupling of the economies. One reason for that is because Trump isn’t just focusing on tariffs on China, but he’s also focusing on third countries where there are pass-throughs to the US,” said Bremmer.

Trump unexpectedly held off tariffs on China on his first day back at the White House and delayed the ban on short video app TikTok. But in an unprecedented move he floated the possibility of a joint venture, saying he was seeking a 50-50 partnership between Washington and Chinese owner ByteDance.

“Getting to a deal with China will require a level of execution implementation that’s far more complicated across the Trump administration, not to mention some support from the GOP and Congress, and we’re nowhere close to that,” said Bremmer.

However, Allison predicted positive relations between both economic powers as their leaders enjoy a “very right relationship” and could find common areas of cooperation, including ending the war in Ukraine.

He added: “In terms of their interests, while fundamentally in the long run there is rivalry of a rising and ruling power, but if I look at the agency and the opportunities for agency here, doing a deal to conclude a war in Ukraine is not hard for [Xi Jinping] to be part of.”

World leaders, business titans, and policymakers gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the WEF’s 55th annual meeting, which runs until Jan. 24.

This year’s conference explores ways to tackle shared challenges like climate change, technology, and economic inequality through global collaboration.


UN says no aid convoy looting in Gaza since ceasefire

Updated 21 January 2025
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UN says no aid convoy looting in Gaza since ceasefire

  • Throughout the conflict in Gaza, the UN has denounced obstacles restricting the flow and distribution of aid into the battered Palestinian territory

GENEVA: The United Nations on Tuesday said that there had been no reports of aid convoys being looted in war-ravaged Gaza since a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect.
“These two first days of entry: there have been no records of looting or attacks against aid workers,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.
During the 15-month war, “there has been a sad, tragic history of looting happening,” he said.
“The past two days, we have not seen any looting. We have not seen any organized armed gangs or groups, whatever you want to call them, attacking the aid that is coming in.”
Throughout the conflict in Gaza, the UN has denounced obstacles restricting the flow and distribution of aid into the battered Palestinian territory.
Desperately-needed humanitarian aid has begun to flow into Gaza after Israel and Hamas on Sunday conducted the first exchange of hostages for prisoners agreed under the terms of the ceasefire.
More than 900 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Monday, the United Nations said.
The day the deal came into force, 630 trucks entered Gaza.
Laerke said that aid organizations were eager to “maximize delivery through this opening. Hunger is widespread. People are homeless.”
The war has devastated much of the Gaza Strip and displaced the vast majority of its population of 2.4 million, many of them multiple times.
Laerke said that it was important to see the issue of looting “in the wider picture as to why were these gangs there in the first place.”
With only a trickle of aid coming into the territory before the ceasefire deal, he pointed out that “whatever came into Gaza... had extremely high value.”
“So there were incentives to do that (looting). Now, of course, the more aid that comes in... those incentives will probably not be there as much.”


Israeli minister says he welcomes Trump’s reversal of US sanctions on settlers

Updated 21 January 2025
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Israeli minister says he welcomes Trump’s reversal of US sanctions on settlers

  • Trump’s decision is a reversal of a major policy action by former President Joe Biden’s administration

JERUSALEM: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed US President Donald Trump’s reversal of sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The pro-settler Smotrich, in a message to Trump on Tuesday, called the move an “expression of your deep connection to the Jewish people and our historical right to our land.”
Trump’s decision is a reversal of a major policy action by former President Joe Biden’s administration that had imposed sanctions on numerous Israeli settler individuals and entities, freezing their US assets and generally barring Americans from dealing with them.
“These sanctions were a severe act of foreign interference in the internal affairs of the State of Israel, undermining democratic principles and the mutual relationship between the two friendly nations,” Smotrich said.
Smotrich added that Israel looked forward to “continued fruitful cooperation to strengthen its national security, expand settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel, and strengthen Israel’s position in the world.”
US sanctions on settlers were imposed after the Biden administration repeatedly urged the Israeli government to take action to hold extremists to account for actions that Washington believes set back hopes for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Palestinians want as the core of an independent state. It has built Jewish settlements there that most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes this and cites historical and Biblical ties to the land.