Make The Whole World Know That The South Also Exists

On 19 January 2022, US President Joe Biden held a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. The discussion ranged from Biden’s failure to pass a $1.75 trillion investment bill (the result of the defection of two Democrats) to the increased tensions between the United States and Russia. According to a recent NBC poll, 54% of adults in the United States disapprove of his presidency and 71% feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

The political and cultural divisions that widened during the Trump years continue to inflict a heavy toll on US society, including over the government’s ability to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Iran Official Proposes Formation Of Countries’ Union Against Sanctions

All, with consolidation, should stand against the US sanctions and plots, Rezaei said in a meeting with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, according to the IRNA Saturday report.

In his remarks, Rezaei said that the Iranian nation and government pay special respect to Nicaragua’s resistance against excessive demands.

He went on to stress that the resistant countries should make further efforts to expand their relations and friendship because the bullying powers, particularly the United States, are after preventing nations’ development and cooperation.

Further, he noted that the Islamic Republic of Iran has stood by Nicaragua and is ready to strengthen ties with it.

For his part, the Nicaraguan president thanked Rezaei for attending his swearing-in ceremony and appreciated the strong spirit of the Islamic Republic against the enemies’ pressures.

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The Iran Deal And The Assassination Of Soleimani

Vienna – World leaders have descended upon Austrian capital Vienna to participate in the ongoing nuclear deal being negotiated primarily between the United States and Iran. Today, MintPress spoke to Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran. Dr. Marandi is currently in Vienna as part of the Iranian delegation.

While corporate media often portray Iran as a recalcitrant pariah and the United States as a long-suffering broker in the situation, Dr. Marandi notes that it was actually the Trump administration that unilaterally walked away from the agreement. Furthermore, President Barack Obama refused to live up to his promise to remove financial sanctions against Iran.

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As Iran Honors Qassem Soleimani, Raisi Demands Trump Be Put On Trial

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets on Monday, January 3 to observe the second anniversary of the assassination of major general Qassem Soleimani. The largest procession was taken out in his hometown in Kerman. Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi also addressed the nation on the occasion and demanded a fair trial of former US president Donald Trump and his associates for the assassination.

Calling the assassination a terrorist act which had implications on international peace and security, Iranian ambassador to the UN Security Council, Majid Takht-Ravanchi wrote a letter to the chair of the council asking it to “live up to its charter based responsibilities and hold the United States and the Israeli regime to account for planning, supporting and committing a terrorist act,” Press Tv reported.

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Thousands Rally In Baghdad To Mark 2020 Killing Of Iran General

Thousands of people have rallied in the Iraqi capital to mark the second anniversary of the killing of a revered Iranian commander and his Iraqi lieutenant in a drone attack by the United States.

Chanting “Death to America”, the marchers filled a Baghdad square to honor Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the elite Revolutionary Guard, until his death on January 3, 2020.

“US terrorism has to end”, read one sign at the rally by backers of the pro-Iranian Hashed, also known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a former paramilitary alliance that has been integrated into Iraq’s state security apparatus.

“We will not let you stay after today in the land of the martyrs,” another placard read. US and Israeli flags were strewn on the ground, with people trampling them.

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Iran Is Spearheading A Geopolitical Sea Change In West Asia

Benjamin Franklin once famously wrote to his fellow colonials: “Either we hang together or we hang separately.”

Those words are just as true today as they were 270 years ago, for empires have always controlled by dividing their victims into regional tribal interests in order to be better conquered.

While techniques have adapted to modern times, the essential ingredients for the science of discord remain relatively unchanged: keep resources scarce, fear and ignorance high, and let a targeted population clash over diminishing returns of scarcity.

Amid this division, myopic ethnic, religious, and linguistic prejudices have fertile soil to grow to the benefit of an oligarchic elite.

Today’s Americans, sitting as they are on the precipice of a their own internal civil clashes, and economic collapse more broadly, have not heeded the advice of their own founding fathers well enough.

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Eighth Round Of JCPOA Revival Talks Begin

“Today all parties have agreed to come back to activate the eighth round of negotiations even in (the) Christmas and New Year’s holiday. This in itself fully shows a greater sense of urgency on the part of all parties concerned,” Wang Qun, China’s ambassador to the United Nations institutions headquartered in Vienna, Austria, which includes the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) nuclear watchdog, told reporters on Monday.

China is just one of several parties to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal, who also include Russia, France, Germany, the UK, the European Union, the US, and Iran. However, since Tehran refuses direct negotiations with Washington, which is responsible for shredding the deal in 2018, the deal’s other parties have headed up the talks.

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Iran Threatens Sanctions Against US Over Treatment Of Black Americans

The Iranian government vowed today to impose sanctions on the United States over racial and policing issues.

Secretary-General of Iran’s Human Rights Office Kazem Gharibabadi said the Islamic Republic will publish a list of American entities and individuals involved in human rights abuses. They will then be subject to sanctions from Iran, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Gharibabadi did not offer specifics on what the sanctions will entail, but said the move relates to policing issues in the United States, particularly in regard to Black Americans.

“Human rights experts confirmed that police brutality in the US against people of color especially, African-Americans, should be considered systemic racism,” he said.

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Biden Keeps Crushing Sanctions Yet Blames Iran For Nuclear Impasse

At the Vienna talks on restoring the Iran nuclear deal, the US and EU are accusing Iran of refusing to compromise. Mohammad Marandi, a University of Tehran professor advising the Iran delegation in Vienna, says that the compromise was the nuclear deal itself, and the problem is the US refusal to abide by its own commitments and lift the sanctions that target Iranian civilians.

Guest: Mohammad Marandi. Professor at the University of Tehran and adviser to the Iran delegation at talks on restoring the JCPOA in Vienna.

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Iranian President Asks US To Lift Sanctions To Show Seriousness

n a televised address on Monday, October 18, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi asserted that a return to the nuclear deal should mean the end of all unilateral sanctions imposed by the US since it withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Raisi pointed out that lifting of sanctions would indicate the seriousness of the US about the talks in Vienna. He emphasized that Iran is serious and committed to the talks and would return to the table soon, saying that it “will never leave the negotiation table,” IRNA reported.

The talks in Vienna between Iran and the remaining signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran nuclear deal – France, the UK, Germany, Russia and China – have stopped since Raisi was elected president in June. Iran has claimed that it is reviewing the outcome of the six rounds of talks held so far and will return soon without conditions.

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Tehran Warns Israel Against ‘Military Adventure’

Delivered on Thursday and printed in Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, the letter comes as Iran makes preparations to return to Vienna for negotiations on reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) next week.

“We warn the Zionist regime against any miscalculation or military adventure targeting Iran and its nuclear program,” wrote Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, referring to Israel.

Ravanchi said Israel has taken its “provocative and adventurous threats… to alarming levels” in recent months, especially as the Biden administration in Washington continues to slowly press ahead on the Vienna talks. He said the “systematic and explicit threats by the Zionist regime … prove that it is responsible for terrorist attacks against [Iran’s] peaceful nuclear program in the past.”

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Why Does Congress Fight Over Childcare But Not F-35s?

President Biden and the Democratic Congress are facing a crisis as the popular domestic agenda they ran on in the 2020 election is held hostage by two corporate Democratic Senators, fossil-fuel consigliere Joe Manchin and payday-lender favorite Kyrsten Sinema.

But the very week before the Dems’ $350 billion-per-year domestic package hit this wall of corporate money-bags, all but 38 House Democrats voted to hand over more than double that amount to the Pentagon. Senator Manchin has hypocritically described the domestic spending bill as “fiscal insanity,” but he has voted for a much larger Pentagon budget every year since 2016. 

Real fiscal insanity is what Congress does year after year, taking most of its discretionary spending off the table and handing it over to the Pentagon before even considering the country’s urgent domestic needs.

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Hezbollah-Brokered Iranian Fuel Arrives In Crisis-Hit Lebanon

Beirut, Lebanon – The first of several truck convoys carrying Iranian fuel has arrived in Lebanon from Syria, a Hezbollah spokesperson told Al Jazeera – a shipment intended to help ease crippling fuel shortages amid a dire economic crisis.

The first shipments of the fuel, carried by two convoys totalling 40 trucks according to Hezbollah’s Al Manar television channel, arrived in Lebanon on Thursday.

The fuel delivery has been portrayed by the Iran-linked Lebanese group as a huge boost to the cash-strapped country. However, the shipments violate United States sanctions imposed on Iranian oil sales and have gotten a mixed response in Lebanon.

The first of four Iranian fuel tankers docked in Syria’s Baniyas port earlier this week.

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Why Hezbollah Is Bringing Iranian Fuel To Lebanon

The chokehold on Lebanon has grown even tighter, thanks to the embargo imposed against it by the United States and its Arab allies in the Persian Gulf. This comes at the lowest point of Lebanon’s two-year-old economic crisis, a catastrophe the World Bank calls the worst the world has seen since 1850. The country’s sudden-but-deliberate fuel shortage, vital to essential daily activity and life-saving medical services, has accelerated this alarm. Today, bread is in shortage and hospitals are sending out distress calls, civilians are camping in front of petrol stations, and water has all but disappeared from supermarket shelves.

With general government inaction and the failure of Lebanon’s political parties to form a new government, Hezbollah has forged ahead with its plan to import fuel from Iran.

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