Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 over two days but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.

“Such terrorist acts, that are undoubtedly due to the desperation and successive failures of the Zionist regime, will soon be met with a crushing response from the resistance front,” Guards commander General Hossein Salami said in a message to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, quoted by state media.

The resistance front led by Iran includes Tehran-backed groups across the Middle East, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Shiite armed groups in Iraq as well as Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In April, Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, after it bombed an annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

Most were intercepted by allied air forces or Israel’s own air defenses.

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The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of Iran’s military which has links to Tehran-aligned armed groups across the Middle East, played a key part in the Islamic Republic’s first direct attack on Israel in April.

Iranian state TV on Friday said that “a large number of new anti-ship cruise missiles were added to the IRGC naval forces by the order of the Guards chief.”

The missiles “have new capabilities” with “high-explosive warheads and being untraceable,” it added.

According to the report, a total of 2,654 military systems including long-range and medium-range missiles, drones for combat and reconnaissance, and electronic warfare units were added to the Guards’ naval forces.

IRGC chief General Hossein Salami, speaking at an event where some of the new weapon systems were showcased, stressed the importance of being able to “stop the enemy from afar.”

“If we cannot engage with the enemy in the depths of the sea and oceans at any desired point and stop the enemy from afar, we will naturally have problems at our national borders,” he said.

“In today’s world, one must either be strong in order to survive and be safe, or surrender. There is no middle way.”

The unveiling of the weapons came as the region, already affected by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza since early October, was on high alert after Iran and its allies vowed retaliation for the killing last week of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Israel, blamed by the Palestinian militant group, the Islamic Republic, and others for the attack, has not claimed responsibility for it.

Following Haniyeh’s killing, Iranian officials and military commanders have promised to take action against Israel, while calls for regional de-escalation have grown.

On Thursday, Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri, told AFP that Israel had committed “a strategic mistake” and should “pay a price” for the Tehran attack.

Iran backs Hamas and has repeatedly hailed the group’s October 7 attack that triggered the Gaza war while denying any direct involvement.

A series of tit-for-tat escalations since the start of the war, which has drawn in Iranian allies in Lebanon, Yemen, and other parts of the Middle East, led to Tehran launching hundreds of missiles and rockets directly at Israel in April.

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,699 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

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Haniyeh’s killing came after Israel on Tuesday struck a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, killing a senior commander of the Iran-backed group it said was responsible for a weekend rocket attack on the Israel-annexed Golan Heights.

“Brother, leader, mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, died in a Zionist strike on his headquarters in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of the new (Iranian) president,” the Palestinian militant group said in a statement.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also announced the death, saying Haniyeh’s residence in Tehran was “hit” and he was killed along with a bodyguard.

“The residence of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political office of Hamas Islamic Resistance, was hit in Tehran, and as a result of this incident, him and one of his bodyguards were martyred,” said a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Sepah news website.

The Guards said the cause of the incident was not immediately clear but it was “being investigated.”

Haniyeh had traveled to Tehran to attend Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Israeli army declined to comment on foreign media reports.

‘Axis of Resistance’

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring back all hostages taken during the October 7 attack, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

The attack launched by Hamas on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,400 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.

Regional tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, drawing in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.

Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017 to succeed Khaled Meshaal.

He was already a well-known figure having become Palestinian prime minister in 2006 following an upset victory by Hamas in that year’s parliamentary election.

Considered a pragmatist, Haniyeh lived in exile and split his time between Turkey and Qatar.

He had traveled on diplomatic missions to Iran and Turkey during the war, meeting both the Turkish and Iranian presidents.

Haniyeh was said to maintain good relations with the heads of the various Palestinian factions, including rivals to Hamas.

He joined Hamas in 1987 when the militant group was founded amid the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, which lasted until 1993.

Hamas is part of the “axis of resistance,” Tehran-aligned groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen arrayed against arch-foe Israel.

Iran has made support for the Palestinian cause a centerpiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It has hailed Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel but denied any involvement.

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Washington and Tehran have long been sharply at odds with tensions centered on Iran’s contested nuclear program and heightened by the Gaza war between their respective allies Israel and Hamas.

On Friday, American news website Axios reported that US and Iranian officials held indirect talks in Oman “on how to avoid escalating regional attacks.”

The official IRNA news agency said late Saturday that “the representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations confirmed indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States in Oman.”

It quoted him as saying that “these negotiations were not the first and will not be the last,” without giving the time and place of the talks.

The discussions were held after Iran launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13-14.

The barrage came in response to a deadly April 1 air strike, widely blamed on Israel, that levelled Iran’s consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

The Israeli army said the vast majority of the over 300 missiles and drones fired by Iran were intercepted with the help of the United States and other allies, and that the attack caused only minimal damage.

Less than a week later, explosions shook a site in Iran’s central province of Isfahan in what US media reported as an Israeli response to the Iranian attack.

Tehran has since downplayed the reported Israeli raid and said it would not respond unless Iranian “interests” were again targeted.

Israel has been Iran’s sworn enemy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Regional tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, drawing in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.

Switzerland represents Washington’s interests in Iran.

The two foes have in recent years engaged in indirect talks over measures to curb Tehran’s nuclear program, prisoner swaps, and releasing Iran’s frozen funds abroad.

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“These actors targeted more than a dozen US companies and government entities through cyber operations, including spear phishing and malware attacks,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement.

The individuals and companies were working “on behalf of” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC), the Treasury said.

“Iranian malicious cyber actors continue to target US companies and government entities in a coordinated, multi-pronged campaign intended to destabilize our critical infrastructure and cause harm to our citizens,” the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement.

“The United States will continue to leverage our whole-of-government approach to expose and disrupt these networks’ operations,” he added.

Tuesday’s sanctions are the latest to be levied against Tehran by the United States and its allies for supporting anti-Israel proxies in the Middle East and for providing military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Last week, the US and Britain announced widespread sanctions against Iran’s military drone program in response to Tehran’s large-scale attack against Israel earlier this month.

That attack came in response to an April 1 air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus – widely blamed on Israel – that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two generals.

A day after those sanctions were unveiled, the US fined a Thailand-based firm $20 million for more than 450 possible Iran sanctions violations.

They included processing close to $300 million in wire transfers for a company jointly owned by the National Petroleum Company of Iran.

Alongside the Tuesday’s sanctions, the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have also indicted the four individuals in question, “for their roles in cyber activity targeting US entities,” the Treasury Department said.

The post US Sanctions Four Over ‘Malicious Cyber Activity’ for Iran’s Military appeared first on The Defense Post.

The launch of “Pars-I” with the Russian Soyuz-2.1b launcher was broadcast live by state television in Iran.

The satellite was launched “from Russia’s Vostochny launch base,” some 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) east of Moscow, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Iran’s telecommunications minister Issa Zareppur said “Pars-I” was “fully domestically developed” in Iran, which he said carried out a dozen satellite launches over the past two years.

In January, Iran said it simultaneously launched three satellites into orbit, nearly a week after the launch of a research satellite by its Revolutionary Guards.

Western governments, including the United States, have repeatedly warned Iran against such launches, saying the same technology can be used for ballistic missiles, including ones designed to deliver a nuclear warhead.

Iran has countered that it is not seeking nuclear weapons and that its satellite and rocket launches are for civil or defense purposes only.

In August 2022, Russia launched Iran’s remote-sensing Khayyam satellite into orbit from Kazakhstan amid controversy that Moscow might use it to boost its surveillance of military targets in its war in Ukraine.

Moscow has sought to strengthen its alliances with other countries ostracised by the West, including Iran, which has been accused of supplying Moscow with armed drones for its offensive in Ukraine.

This month, the United States said it would soon impose new sanctions on Iran over its backing for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Tehran denies the allegations.

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The operation was Washington’s response to a drone attack by Iran-backed militants in Iraq last month that led to the deaths of three American soldiers in Jordan, NBC reported, citing US officials.

According to the update, the cyberattack was aimed at an Iranian ship that was observed collecting information from passing vessels across the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The attack was intended to disrupt the vessel’s functions and prevent it from sharing intelligence with Houthi rebels stationed in Yemen who fired missiles and drones at commercial ships in the region.

The news agency wrote that one of the sources with knowledge of the cyberattack said the mission involved the MV Behshad, a merchant vessel suspected of being a spy ship under private Iranian firm Rahbaran Omid Darya Ship Management Company and developed by Beijing’s Guangzhou International Shipyard.

Meanwhile, the US National Security Council declined to relay additional specifics and referred clarifications to the Pentagon, which refused to comment.

The MV Behshad

In documentation published by the US-based Institute for the Study of War, MV Behshad is said to likely be an espionage asset controlled by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp that “provides Houthis with real-time intelligence.”

Earlier records of military activities in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden showed that either the merchant vessel or its predecessor, the “Saviz,” were responsible for feeding the Yemen-based Houthis data as well as explosive drones.

“The Saviz might have similarly been supporting Houthi attacks on commercial tankers in the Bab al Mandab Strait and facilitating the smuggling of personnel and materials into Yemen via small dhows prior to the Israeli limpet mine attack on the Saviz in April 2021,” the institute wrote.

During an NBC discussion with Iranian UN Ambassador Amir Saeid this month, he said that Behshad is moving throughout the Red Sea “to combat the piracy activities and is not providing intelligence to Houthi forces.”

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“Today, the process of pouring concrete for the foundation of the reactor started at the Isfahan site,” said Mohammad Eslami, head of Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, according to state media IRNA.

The Isfahan nuclear research center in central Iran is already home to three reactors. The new 10-megawatt research reactor is being constructed to create a powerful neutron source, IRNA said.

It would have a variety of applications, including fuel and nuclear material tests and the production of industrial radioisotopes and radiopharmaceuticals, it said.

Tehran has been under biting US sanctions since 2018, when then US president Donald Trump withdrew his country from a landmark nuclear deal which granted Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear activities designed to prevent it from developing an atomic warhead.

Iran has always denied any ambition to develop a nuclear weapons capability, insisting that its activities are entirely peaceful.

In January, the director general of the UN’s IAEA nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, lamented that Iran was “restricting” cooperation with the agency and called the Iran nuclear situation “frustrating.”

On Thursday, Eslami announced the construction of a nuclear power plant complex in Sirik, on the Strait of Hormuz, comprising four individual plants with a combined production capacity of 5,000 megawatts.

“We must reach the production capacity of 20,000 megawatts of nuclear power in the country” by the year 2041, Eslami said while on a trip to the region with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Only five countries – the United States, France, China, Russia and South Korea – currently have more than 20,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity installed.

The Sirik plants are expected to be fully operational by 2031, IRNA reported. Iran currently has one operational nuclear power plant, in Bushehr, capable of producing 3,000 megawatts.

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The attacks destroyed “a spy headquarters” and a “gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” in Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, the official IRNA news agency reported, quoting a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Four people were killed and six others wounded in the attack, according to Iraq’s Kurdistan security council.

The prominent businessman Peshraw Dizayee was among several civilians who were killed, the Kurdistan Democratic Party said.

The United States on Monday condemned the attacks as “reckless,” warning they undermine stability.

“We oppose Iran’s reckless missile strikes, which undermine Iraq’s stability,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Earlier, a White House spokesperson said no US personnel or facilities were targeted.

The IRGC also hit targets in Syria with ballistic missiles, including the “gathering places of commanders and main elements related to recent terrorist operations, particularly the Islamic State group,” their Sepah News service reported.

It added that the strike on Syria was in response to recent attacks by terrorist groups that killed Iranians in the southern cities of Kerman and Rask.

Explosions were heard in Aleppo and its countryside, where “at least 4 missiles that came from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea” fell, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said.

On January 3, suicide bombers struck crowds gathered near the tomb of the revered IRGC general Qasem Soleimani in Kerman, killing around 90 people. The attack was later claimed by IS.

In December, at least 11 Iranian police officers were killed in an attack on a police station in Rask. The jihadist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), which was formed in 2012 and is blacklisted by Iran as a “terrorist” group, claimed responsibility.

Israeli ‘Spy Operations’

The IRGC also said it had struck alleged Israeli “spy headquarters” in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.

It said the headquarters had served as “the center for developing espionage operations and planning terrorist actions in the region,” naming Israel’s Mossad spy organization.

The Guards said the strike was in response to recent attacks on Iran and the “axis of resistance” of Iran-aligned groups, which have raised concerns about violence spreading from Israel’s war in Gaza.

Regional tensions have spiked, drawing in Iran-backed armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

In March 2022, the IRGC carried out missile attacks in Arbil, claiming to target a “strategic center” belonging to arch-foe Israel.

On December 25, Iran said an Israeli strike killed the senior Guards commander Razi Moussavi.

And on January 8, Israel killed Wissam Hassan Tawil, a top commander of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon, according to a security source.

His death came shortly after an Israeli missile strike on Beirut killed Saleh al-Aruri, a senior leader of Hamas, which is also supported by Iran.

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The claim from IS came as Iran observed a day of national mourning for those killed in Wednesday’s blasts.

In a statement on Telegram, IS said two of its members “activated their explosives vests” among the crowds who had come to honor Soleimani on the anniversary of his death in a targeted US drone strike in Baghdad four years ago.

Iranian investigators had already confirmed that the first blast at least was the work of a “suicide bomber” and believed the trigger for the second was “very probably another suicide bomber,” the official IRNA news agency reported earlier, citing an “informed source.”

The Security Council condemned the twin bombings as a “cowardly terrorist attack” and urged all UN member states “to cooperate actively” with Iran in holding its “perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors” accountable.

Soleimani, who headed the Guards’ foreign operations arm the Quds Force, was a staunch enemy of IS, a Sunni extremist group that has carried out previous attacks in majority-Shiite Iran.

The death toll was revised down from around 100 the day after the bombings, which also wounded hundreds near Soleimani’s tomb in the southern city of Kerman.

Iran has suffered deadly attacks in the past from jihadists and other militants as well as targeted killings of officials and nuclear scientists blamed on arch-foe Israel.

On Thursday, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi spoke to ISNA news agency about bolstering security over its porous borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He said authorities have identified “priority points to block along the border” with the two countries, which has long been a key access point for militant groups, drug smugglers, and irregular migrants.

Regional tensions have surged amid the Gaza war sparked when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched their deadly October 7 attack on Israel, which Tehran welcomed while denying any involvement.

President Ebrahim Raisi‘s deputy chief of staff for political affairs, Mohammad Jamshidi, charged on social media platform X that “the responsibility for this crime lies with the US and Zionist (Israeli) regimes, and terrorism is just a tool.”

The United States rejected any suggestion that it or its ally Israel were behind the bombings, while Israel declined to comment.

“The United States was not involved in any way, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

“We have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion,” he added.

‘Desperate Enemy’

Regional tensions have surged since the Gaza war erupted, drawing in Iran-backed armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel on October 7, killing around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

In response, Israel launched a relentless offensive that has reduced vast swathes of Gaza to rubble and killed more than 22,300 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Iranian authorities called for mass protests against the Kerman bombings after weekly prayers on Friday.

The dead will be buried in private funerals organized by their families, Tasnim news agency reported citing the governor of Kerman.

Iran’s emergency services chief Jafar Miadfar said 284 people were wounded in the bombings and “195 are still hospitalized.”

Revered by many Iranians, Soleimani oversaw Iranian military operations across the Middle East, and millions came to his funeral in 2020.

Current Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani suggested the Kerman crowd was “attacked by bloodthirsty people supplied by the United States and the Zionist regime.”

He pointed to two recent killings widely blamed on Israel — a Beirut strike on Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri, and the killing near Damascus of senior Guards commander Razi Moussavi in December.

“The killing of Aruri and people like Razi Moussavi and the crime in Kerman show how desperate the enemy is,” Qaani said.

Iran regularly accuses its arch-foes Israel and the United States of inciting unrest, and authorities last month executed five people convicted of collaborating with Israel.

In July, Iran’s intelligence ministry said it had disbanded a network “linked to Israel’s spy organization” that it said had been plotting “terrorist operations” across Iran.

In September, the Fars news agency reported that an IS-affiliated key “operative” in charge of carrying out “terrorist operations” had been arrested in Kerman.

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