FM Slams Terrorist Strike in Lebanon

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi Saturday condemned the recent terrorist attack on the convoy of the Lebanese minister of youth and sports.
At least four people were injured after gunmen ambushed the convoy of Lebanese Minister of Youth and Sports Faisal Karami in the northern city of Tripoli on Friday.
According to a statement issued by Karami’s office, the minister was not hurt in the attack and that the four who were injured were his bodyguards.
Iran’s Ambassador to Beirut Ghazanfar Roknabadi has also censured the recent terrorist attack on the convoy of the Lebanese minister of youth and sports.
Roknabadi held a telephone conversation with former Lebanese prime minister Omar Karami and Faisal Karami on behalf of Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, IRNA reported.
The Lebanese minister, for his part, expressed appreciation for Iran’s heed to the issue.
Voice of Lebanon radio said that the incident took place after Karami’s bodyguards exchanged fire with protesters who were participating in a sit-in to demand the release of detainees held at Roumieh prison, which is located northeast of Beirut.
Shortly after the attack, Karami told local TV channel OTV that he felt he was not the target of the attack, but rather that ‘the unrest aims at targeting the country’s security situation’. The minister, however, said that the incident represented an attack on his life.

Tehran Won’t Give Up Caspian Sea Rights

An Iranian lawmaker has reaffirmed the country’s commitment to all international regulations, stressing the Islamic Republic will never relinquish its rights in the Caspian Sea.
“Tehran is committed to all international conventions and agreements while safeguarding its national interests in the Caspian Sea,” spokesman for the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Hossein Naqavi Hosseini said on Saturday, Press TV reported.
He added that Iran would make utmost efforts to establish the most amicable relations with its 15 neighboring states and prevent any tension.
Addressing the second national meeting on the legal regime of the Caspian Sea in northern Iranian city of Sari on Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that commitment to international conventions and treaties is among the country’s absolute principles in the field of foreign policy, and the advancement of interests and the maintenance of national sovereignty are conducted in line with these treaties.
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on earth by area, and is variously classed as the world’s largest lake or a full-fledged sea.
The maritime and seabed boundaries of the Caspian Sea have yet to be demarcated among the five countries bordering the sea.
Despite extensive negotiations, the legal status of the Caspian Sea has been unclear since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Currently, the Caspian Sea’s legal regime is based on two agreements signed between Iran and the Soviet Union in 1921 and 1940.
The littoral states have yet to come up with a final convention on the Caspian Sea, which will determine their territorial rights as well as other matters related to the sea.

Berlin for Expanding Media Cooperation

German Ambassador to Iran Bernd Erbel said his country is keen to expand media cooperation with Iran.
The German diplomat made the remarks in a meeting with Iran’s Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance for Press and Information Mohammad Jafar Mohammadzadeh, IRNA reported.
Erbel said increased bilateral media and cultural cooperation would pave the way for expansion of all-out ties between the two nations.
He further called for exchange of journalists in order to reflect the realities in both countries.
For his part, the Iranian official criticized the western media for misrepresenting the realities in the Islamic Republic.
He regretted that the world major media belongs to bullying powers and the Zionsit regime.

US Targeting Syria After Failure To Attack Iran

A senior army commander said the US has targeted Syria after it failed to attack the Islamic Republic.
Addressing a group of Army forces on Saturday, Commander of the Iranian Army Ground Force Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said the US planned September 11, 2001 attacks and accused Muslim countries to find an excuse to attack the Middle-East.
“To that end they resorted to preemptive strikes and occupied Afghanistan first and then Iraq. The Islamic Republic of Iran, too, was their next target but due to the very wise leadership of (Leader of the Islamic Revolution) Ayatollah (Seyyed Ali) Khamenei and the unity among the Iranian nation they (Americans) failed to attain their objective, and then pointed their guns at that country which supports resistance (against Israel and the US), that was Syria. “ Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 and tens of thousands of people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the turmoil.
The Syrian government says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals. Damascus blames western countries and some of their regional allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey of arming the opposition and fueling the crisis in the country, as reports indicate that a large number of insurgents fighting the Syrian government are foreign nationals.
Several international human rights organizations have accused the foreign-sponsored insurgents of committing war crimes.
Iran has repeatedly rejected foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, calling for national dialog as the only way out of the country’s prolonged impasse.

Palestinian Deal Countdown to Israel’s End

A member of Majlis said the Israeli regime is concerned about the reinforced unity among Palestinians, stressing that an agreement by rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, will be tantamount to the countdown to Tel Aviv’s collapse.
“Under the circumstances that Hamas and Fatah have had positive achievements regarding war against the Zionist regime [of Israel], reconciliation between these two groups will mean the countdown to the Zionists’ fall,” Ramezan Shojaei Kiasari said, Press TV reported on Saturday.
Despite ups and downs in ties between Hamas and Fatah during recent years, they should make great efforts to speed up the trend of building national unity, he added.
The legislator emphasized that Islamic Awakening can encourage both sides to reach a constant and lasting agreement and accelerate efforts to end their previous conflicts.
He also said that a comprehensive agreement to reach national unity and establish a new political structure for Palestine can be regarded as a ‘positive and fruitful’ development for the Palestinian people. Shojaei Kiasari said that the Israeli regime has always used disagreements between Palestinian groups to promote its own unilateral and aggressive measures, adding unity among Palestinians would be an obstacle to its moves.
Hamas and Fatah agreed in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Thursday to revive their unity deal, stalled for two years, by the end of January. The Cairo talks followed the January 9 meeting between the acting Palestinian Authority chief, Mahmoud Abbas, from the Fatah party and the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, Khaled Meshaal, in Cairo.
In 2011, Hamas and Fatah signed a unity deal, which has not yet been implemented. The agreement was designed to lay the groundwork for the formation of a transitional government ahead of last year’s legislative election. But the process was halted.
Hamas and Fatah have been at odds since Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in the Gaza Strip in January 2006.

Fresh Ban On Iranian Channels

The Spanish government ordered the satellite service provider Hispasat to take the Iranian Spanish language channel, Hispan TV, off the air in a blatant assault on freedom of speech.
The move comes a month after the Spanish satellite company—Hispasat--terminated the terrestrial broadcast of Hispan TV, Press TV reported on Friday.
Back then, the move was immediately welcomed by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which called it an important development in worldwide efforts to contain Iran’s media influence.
AJC Executive Director David Harris has acknowledged that the committee had for months been engaged in discussions with the Spaniards over taking Iranian media off the air.
Hispan TV, along with Iran’s 24-hour English language news channel Press TV, has already been targeted by Hispasat’s fellow European satellite providers Eutelsat and Hotbird under the European Union’s pressure. The EU has, however, denied the claims by the European satellite companies.
Hispasat is partly owned by Eutelsat, whose French-Israeli CEO is blamed for the recent wave of attacks on Iranian media in Europe. Also in November, the Hong Kong-based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. (AsiaSat) took Iranian channels off air in East Asia.
On Thursday, Head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Ezzatollah Zarghami censured the bans the on Iranian channels, saying the move is a clear example of the West’s false claim of supporting freedom of opinion.
“The US hatched different plots since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in order to prevent the message of the revolution from being exported and counter the anti-arrogance thoughts of the Iranian nation,” Zarghami said.
The IRIB head further pointed to bids by the government of US President Barack Obama to counter the Islamic Republic’s ties with Latin America, saying, “While this region was regarded as the United States’ backyard until about a decade ago, people in Latin American countries are currently familiar with the enlightening message of the Islamic Revolution.”
On December 28, 2012, the US president enacted the law to counter Iran’s growing relations with the Latin American countries. The so-called Countering Iran in Western Hemisphere Act requires the US Department of State to develop a strategy within 180 days to ‘address Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity’ in Latin America.
Major Latin American nations have enhanced their diplomatic and trade ties with Iran in recent years. The promotion of all-out cooperation with Latin American countries has been among the top priorities of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy over the past few years.
Washington considers Latin America as its strategic backyard, a term used to refer to the USA’s traditional areas of dominance.

Sanctions Cannot Paralyze Iran

Iranian Ambassador to Paris Ali Ahani, in an interview with France 24 TV channel, underlined that the western sanctions cannot paralyze Iran as the nation never bows to pressures.