A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, Jan. 20, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a network based in Iran and China that it accused of procuring ballistic missile propellant ingredients on behalf of Iran‘s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to increase pressure on Tehran.

The US Treasury Department in a statement said it was targeting six entities and six individuals as part of the action, which comes as the Trump administration has relaunched negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

“Iran‘s aggressive development of missiles and other weapons capabilities imperils the safety of the United States and our partners,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

“It also destabilizes the Middle East, and violates the global agreements intended to prevent the proliferation of these technologies. To achieve peace through strength, Treasury will continue to take all available measures to deprive Iran‘s access to resources necessary to advance its missile program.”

Tuesday’s move targeted five China–based companies, one Iran–based firm, and six Iran–based people. The Treasury accused the network of facilitating the procurement of sodium perchlorate and dioctyl sebacate from China to Iran.

It said sodium perchlorate is used to produce ammonium perchlorate, which alongside dioctyl sebacate is usable in solid propellant rocket motors, which Treasury said is commonly used for ballistic missiles.

Tuesday’s move is the latest action targeting Tehran since Trump restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, which includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero to help prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

In his first 2017-2021 term, Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed temporary limits on Tehran’s uranium enrichment activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump also reimposed sweeping U. sanctions.

Since then, Iran has far surpassed that deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.

Western powers accuse Iran of having a clandestine agenda to develop nuclear weapons capability by enriching uranium to a high level of fissile purity, above what they say is justifiable for a civilian atomic energy program. Tehran says its nuclear program is wholly for civilian power purposes.

The post US Targets China, Iran-Based Firms in Fresh Iran Sanctions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A member of the Syrian security forces stands next to a vehicle at the entrance of Druze town of Jaramana, following deadly clashes sparked by a purported recording of a Druze man cursing the Prophet Mohammad which angered Sunni gunmen, as rescuers and security sources say, in southeast of Damascus, Syria, April 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yamam Al Shaar

More than a dozen people were killed in a predominantly Druze town near the Syrian capital on Tuesday in clashes sparked by a purported recording of a Druze man cursing the Prophet Mohammad which angered Sunni gunmen, rescuers and security sources said.

The fighting marked the latest episode of deadly sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minorities have been swelling since Islamist-led rebels ousted former leader Bashar al-Assad from power in December, installing their own government and security forces.

Those fears spiked after the killings of hundreds of Alawites in March in apparent revenge for an attack by Assad loyalists.

The clashes began overnight when gunmen from the nearby town of Maliha and other predominantly Sunni areas converged on the mostly Druze town of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, security sources said.

The fighting, with small and medium arms fire, left 13 people dead, according to local rescue workers.

Among the dead were two members of Syria’s General Security Service, a new security force comprised mostly of former rebels, according to interior ministry spokesperson Mustafa al-Abdo.

Abdo denied that armed gunmen had attacked the town, saying instead that groups of civilians angered by the voice recording had staged a protest that came under fire from Druze groups.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement it was investigating the origin of the voice recording and called for calm, urging citizens not to let emotions lead to violence or damage to public property.

Druze elders met with security forces in a bid to prevent further escalation, a Syrian security source said.

“What was said by a few individuals against our Prophet represents only them and is rejected by us and all of society,” Druze religious leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou said, calling on both communities to reject efforts to fuel sectarian divisions.

Syria’s nearly 14-year war carved the country into various zones of influence, with the Druze – an Arab minority who practice a religion originally derived from Islam – arming themselves to defend their own towns.

The new Islamist-led leadership in Damascus has called for all arms to fall under their authority, but Druze fighters have resisted, saying Damascus has failed to guarantee their protection from hostile militants.

Community leaders blamed the government for failing to prevent Tuesday’s attack and warned that it would bear responsibility for any future repercussions.

“The authorities are responsible for preserving security,” Rabei Munzir, a local Druze activist in Jaramana, told Reuters.

Neighboring Israel has said that it was willing to intervene in Syria to protect the Druze, thousands of whom also live in Israel.

The post More Than a Dozen Killed in Sectarian Clashes Near Syrian Capital first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

In the early hours of April 23, the BBC News website published a report by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell under the headline “Gaza health ministry denies manipulating death toll figures.”

Only in paragraph eight do readers discover the purpose of Knell’s report:

Recently, several media reports have raised questions about the reliability of the statistics by highlighting anomalies between the August and October 2024 and March 2025 lists of fatalities. The reports focus on how some 3,000 names of people originally identified as fatalities were removed from later revised lists.

Among those media reports is an article titled “Hamas ‘quietly drops’ thousands of deaths from casualty figures” — which was published by the Telegraph on April 1 — and cites research carried out by Salo Aizenberg showing that 3,374 names, including over a thousand children, had been dropped from Hamas’ March 2025 list of supposedly identified and confirmed casualties.

On April 5, Sky News published a report titled “Hundreds of names removed from official Gaza war death list” which quotes “[t]he head of the statistics team at Gaza’s health ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi”:

Almost all of the names removed (97%) had initially been submitted through an online form which allows families to record the deaths of loved ones where the body is missing. […]

“We realised that a lot of people [submitted via the form] died a natural death,” Mr Wahidi said. “Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or [living in destroyed] houses caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war.”

Others submitted via the form were found to be imprisoned or to be missing with insufficient evidence that they had died.

Some families submitting false claims, Mr Wahidi said, may have been motivated by the promise of government financial assistance.

Over two weeks later, the same Hamas health ministry statistician (who, as readers may recall, was credited by the authors of a paper published at the Lancet in January 2025) was quoted in Yolande Knell’s report:

A Gazan health official, Zaher al-Wahidi, denied to the BBC that victims had vanished or that there was a lack of transparency, insisting: “The health ministry works towards having accurate data with high credibility.

“In every list that gets shared, there is a greater verification and revision of the list. We cannot say that the health ministry removes names. It’s not a removal process, rather it is a revision and verification process.”

Al-Wahidi’s admission that the names on successive lists are subject to revision and verification is ample indication of the reliability of those lists and the ensuing statistics that the BBC has uncritically quoted and promoted as being reliable for the past 18 months, in line with an editorial policy that has existed at least since 2014.

Knell’s report later includes the following quote:

“It seems like they’re actually updating the lists more in real time, as more information appears,” says Professor Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway College, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation. “We should have regarded the previous lists as a little bit more provisional than I had assumed.” [emphasis added]

The Sky News report includes a quote from the same person:

“”This does cause me to downgrade the quality of the earlier lists, definitely below where I thought they were,” said Professor Michael Spagat, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation.”

Nevertheless, Knell suggests to her readers that the Hamas-supplied figures can be considered reliable because they are used by “UN agencies” and “the media”:

The figures are cited with attribution, by UN agencies and widely in the media.

While Knell does note the failure of the Hamas supplied data to distinguish between civilians and combatants, she does not explain that that policy is deliberate and long-standing:

The list does not distinguish between civilians and members of Palestinian armed groups who are killed in the war, and Israel has accused Hamas of inflating the percentages of women and children.

Neither does she clarify that the Hamas-supplied lists most likely include casualties caused by shortfall missiles launched by Gaza Strip-based terrorist organizations as well as Gazans killed or executed by Hamas.

Knell’s reference to Hamas “inflating the percentages of women and children” as solely an Israeli accusation fails to inform BBC audiences that for months on end, BBC journalists promoted Hamas claims that 70% of the casualties were women and children, despite the absence of verified data to support that claim.

Later in her report, Knell states:

Israel periodically estimates the number of Palestinian fighters killed. At the start of this year, it assessed that 20,000 members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were among the dead. In mid-April it said there had been “more than 100 targeted eliminations” in the past month.

She however fails to inform her readers that in February 2024, the BBC dismissed Israeli assessments of the number of terrorists killed by citing the same 70% women and children mantra which it later abandoned.

Members of the corporation’s funding public may be wondering why the BBC News website chose to publish this report by Yolande Knell, given that it has no new information to add to what was provided in the Sky News report published 16 days earlier.

One possible explanation lies in the fact that for 18 months, the BBC has uncritically quoted and promoted Hamas’ claims concerning casualty figures, despite faulty methodology, changes in the methodology used, repeated removals of names, the inclusion of natural deaths and people killed in previous rounds of conflict, and the absence of independent verification.

This report by Knell would appear to be just yet another chapter in the BBC’s repeated attempts to justify that dubious editorial policy.

Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared. 

The post Despite All Evidence, BBC Still Defends Hamas Casualty Figures first appeared on Algemeiner.com.