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Iran has equipped 51 of its cities and towns with civil defense systems to thwart any possible foreign attack, as tensions rise with Israel and Mossad Chief David Barnea heads to Washington in an attempt to thwart the seemingly imminent revival of the nuclear deal with Tehran.
The civil defense equipment enables Iran’s armed forces to “identify and monitor threats by using round-the-clock software according to the type of the threat and risk,” Deputy Defense Minister General Mehdi Farahi was quoted as saying by Iranian media on Saturday.
Although he did not name the countries that may threaten Iran, the move comes just after Israel announced the purchase of refueling tankers that will help it attack the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites.
Meanwhile, twelve members of the Baha’i faith were arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel in Iran’s northern Mazandaran province, Iranian news agency IRNA reported on Saturday night.
According to the report, two of the heads of the organization were trained at the World House of Justice, located in the Baha’i Center in Haifa, and set up a spy cell with other members of the organization throughout the northern district.
All eyes are on the European Union, now that its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has received a response from Tehran over a text that has been described as a final offer to revive the so-called Iran Deal.
Iran’s answer has been distributed to the six signatories to the 2015 accord to curb Tehran’s nuclear program: the US, Russia, China, France, Germany and Great Britain.
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A bipartisan group of 50 members of Congress wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to reconsider restoring the nuclear deal with Iran, warning that Tehran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] “would be an enormous danger to Americans at home and abroad, and to [the] US’ allies.”
Referring to the assassination attempts on author Salman Rushdie as well as former National Security Advisor John Bolton, the representatives stressed: “Amid Iran-sponsored terror plots to assassinate former US officials and Iranian-American dissidents on American soil, this is no time to remove, suspend, or dilute US terrorism sanctions on Iran or the IRGC.”
Most of the signatories – 34 – are Democrats, including Congressman Josh Gottheimer, who is leading the initiative.
“The IRGC has directly, or through its proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah (Houthis), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and scores of Shiite militias in Iraq, killed hundreds of Americans, and attacked our bases and our allies in the region,” the letter said.
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President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog departed Sunday morning for a state visit to Germany, where they will participate in the 50th anniversary memorial for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
The visit will take place from September 4-6, with Herzog expected to meet German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other senior officials.
Herzog will deliver an address before the German Bundestag and visit the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, accompanied by Steinmeier.
September 5 marks the anniversary of the massacre, when Israeli Olympic team members were taken hostage at the poorly secured athletes’ village by Palestinian gunmen from the Fatah-affiliated Black September terrorist group.
Within 24 hours, 11 Israeli athletes, five Palestinian terrorists and a German policeman were killed after a standoff and subsequent rescue effort erupted into gunfire.
The German government confirmed late last week that the families of the athletes killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics will receive a total of $28 million in compensation.
As part of the agreement reached with the families, Germany has agreed to acknowledge failures that authorities made at the time and to allow German and Israeli historians to review the events surrounding the attack.
“Germany is emphasizing its responsibility for the mistakes that were made there in 1972, but also in the decades that followed,” German Chancellor Scholz said.
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For the first time in over a decade, a Turkish warship docked in an Israeli port on Saturday, a sign of both the rapprochement between the two countries and Israel’s close alliance with NATO.
Turkish destroyer F-247 TCG Kemalreis, which sailed into the Haifa port along with the US Navy ship USS Forrest Sherman, is taking part in a NATO drill.
It will remain docked at the port for a few days, during which it will refuel and “demonstrate presence,” an Israeli army spokesperson said, adding that the vessel is not expected to take part in any additional exercises.
Israel and Turkey expelled one another’s ambassadors in 2018 after the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.
Recommended Reading
- Israel’s Gray-Zone Campaign in Syria Makes Iran ‘Feel Pursued’ (Yaakov Lappin, Jewish News Syndicate)
- It’s Time for a New Era of Israel-Diaspora Ties – Opinion (Nachman Shai, Jerusalem Post)
- Ghost Hospitals Reveal Corruption in Palestinian Authority Health Sector (David Rose, Jewish Chronicle)
- A Pro-Palestinian Youtuber Tried Trolling Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Here’s What Happened. (Jacob Henry, Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
- Debut Novel Offers Original Perspective on Theodor Herzl (Ariel Bulshtein, Israel Hayom)
Featured Image: Leonhard Simon via Getty Images
