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Iran-Russia Strategic Pact to Last 20 Years, Ambassador Says Ahead of Signing
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of a cultural forum dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Turkmen poet and philosopher Magtymguly Fragi, in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 11, 2024. Photo: Sputnik/Alexander Scherbak/Pool via REUTERS
A major comprehensive bilateral agreement that Iran and Russia are set to sign later this week will govern the two countries’ relations for the next two decades, according to the Iranian ambassador to Moscow.
“After the agreement is signed, it must be ratified by Iran’s parliament. Once ratified by the parliament, it will be in effect for 20 years,” the Russian state news agency TASS reported Kazem Jalali as saying on Tuesday.
Jalali’s comments came one day after the Kremlin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will hold talks in Russia on Friday, after which they will sign a long-awaited “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty.”
The two leaders will also discuss “the prospects for further expansion of bilateral cooperation, including in trade, investment, transport, logistics, and culture, as well as current regional and international issues,” according to the Russian statement.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, said on Tuesday that the talks will be held in the Kremlin.
For the past two years, Iran and Russia have been working on the agreement to strengthen cooperation in a wide array of areas. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in October that the “treaty on a comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and Iran” will include closer defense cooperation.
Officials from both countries had said in recent months that the deal would be signed in the near future without elaborating.
“In the past, in the times before the Islamic Revolution [in Iran in 1979], agreements were often imposed on us, so we remained in a weak position. But the current document takes into account the interests of both sides,” Jalali reportedly said on Iranian state television on Tuesday, describing the agreement as “balanced.”
Lavrov said on Tuesday that the pact is not aggressive in nature or aimed against anyone.
“This treaty, like, by the way, our treaty with North Korea, is not aimed against any country. It is constructive in nature, geared toward strengthening the potential of both Russia and Iran, and our friends in various parts of the world to develop their economies, resolve social problems and safely ensure defense capabilities,” he told a news conference, according to Russian state-run media.
When asked whether any third parties have ever expressed concern over this treaty, Russia’s top diplomat responded that most Western countries did so, “because they are always looking for some way to show that Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea are plotting something evil against someone.”
The US government had increasingly raised alarm bells about deepening ties among Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.
Lavrov added that “our presidents will sign this treaty,” dispelling any notion that the agreement won’t cross the finish line.
Russia and Iran have cultivated deeper ties in recent years.
“Economically and culturally, our communications are being strengthened day by day and becoming more robust,” Pezeshkian reportedly told Putin in a meeting in Turkmenistan earlier this year. “The growing trend of cooperation between Iran and Russia, considering the will of the top leaders of both countries, must be accelerated to strengthen these ties.”
Pezeshkian has also committed his country to deeper ties with Russia to counter Western sanctions.
For years, the US and several of its allies, especially in Europe, have imposed sanctions on both Iran and Russia for several reasons, ranging from human rights abuses to aggressive military actions.
In September, for example, the US, Germany, Britain, and France imposed sanctions on Iran for transferring ballistic missiles to Russia for Moscow to use in its ongoing war against Ukraine. Iran denied supplying Russia with the weapons.
Iranian and Russian officials have been working on an international alliance with Russia against US sanctions called the “International Union Against US Sanctions.” An Iranian lawmaker spearheading the effort said last month that it will soon be completed and ready to be put into practice.
The post Iran-Russia Strategic Pact to Last 20 Years, Ambassador Says Ahead of Signing first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.