Iran News Round Up

A selection of the latest news stories and editorials published in Iranian news outlets, compiled by AEI Critical Threats Project Iran Analyst Will Fulton. To receive this daily newsletter, please subscribe online.

Politics

• Member of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission MP Esmail Kowsari echoed the Supreme Leader's threats against a potential attack against Iran and commented on President Barack Obama's visit to Israel:
  • "America is promoting negotiations when when it has placed Iran under pressure, and we are used to these policies and know that America has never judged and acted fairly and legally."
  • "America still has a superpower mentality and recognizes itself as the dominant power in the world, but we have and will not be swayed and all of us know that the proposal with Iran from America is nothing more than a lie."
  • "America's goal from this trip [to Israel] is certainly designing a conspiracy in the region to help the Zionist regime. The Supreme Leader has warned them in his statements that they should not imagine that if they make a mistake we will sit silently. We will destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa."
  • "We would not like such an event to occur in the region but if they make a mistake we have the capability to wipe out the enemy."
  • "The eminent Supreme Leader's statements were a warning for America and the Zionist regime so they know that they cannot get results by waging psychological warfare against us."
• The Supreme Leader has emphasized in his Persian new year speeches that an oil-less economy should be the priority of the next administration.
• Head of Imam Hossein University's Cultural College, Ali Mohammad Naini, said, "negotiations from the Americans' perspective is a tool for imposing [their] will through a soft method":
  • "A desired negotiation from the Americans' perspective is a negotiation that causes Iran's retreat and the Americans do not think of an option other than that."
  • "In reality, negotiation has the same function of overthrow and disintegration from the inside.... Therefore when they do not formally acknowledge the identity and originality of the Iranian Islamic revolution there is a hostile environment. Until the time that the Americans do not exit the hostile environment with Iran, they cannot be considered a rational and reasonable negotiator from the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
    

Regional Developments

• According to AhlulBayt News Agency, the Syrian Islamic Front has announced that its affiliate group "Lawa al-Hagh," has launched missiles against places inside Lebanon that belong to the Lebanese Hezbollah. The group reportedly launched the missiles in response to a Hezbollah attack in the vacinity of Al-Qasir.
• AhlulBayt News Agency reports that the Syrian army have driven rebel forces from cities of al-Talal al-Hamr and Khan Arnabeh in al-Qanitara district, Southwestern Syria.
• In a press statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the death of Dr Mohammed Saeed Ramadan al-Bouti, a longtime supporter of President Bashar al-Assad and Imam of Damascus' historic Ummayyad Mosque, by "extremist groups" in a mosque bombing in Damascus. Lebanese Hezbollah joined the Iranian agency in the condemnation and called al-Bouti's assassination "a crime against humanity."

Photo of the Day

• Minister of Justice Morteza Bakhtiari, Chairman of the Guardian Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, and former Representative of the Supreme Leader to the IRGC Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani attend Friday Prayer in Tehran.