Iranian Americans, US foreign-policy figures rally in DC in protest against Raisi presidency

Hundreds of Iranian Americans whose relatives were put to death by incoming Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi have rallied in DC to call on the US and its allies to hold him accountable. (Supplied: OIAC)
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Updated 03 August 2021
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Iranian Americans, US foreign-policy figures rally in DC in protest against Raisi presidency

  • Ebrahim Raisi, who takes office in Tehran on Tuesday, is accused of crimes against humanity for his part in the execution of thousands of political prisoners
  • As far is Tehran is concerned, ‘sanctions relief is the only game in town,’ former diplomat Marc Ginsberg told Arab News

LONDON: Hundreds of Iranian Americans whose relatives were executed more than three decades ago following sham trials involving new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi took part in a rally in Washington on Monday. They were calling on the US and its allies to hold him accountable for his crimes against humanity.

A number of current and former officials involved in US foreign policy spoke during the rally, at which Arab News was present. They expressed their support for the demonstrators, adding their voices to the calls for justice and for the Iranian regime to be held accountable for its actions.

The rally, hosted in the grounds of the Capitol Building by the Organization of Iranian American Communities, took place the day before Raisi was due to be officially inaugurated as the president of Iran.

The participants had a clear message for the Biden administration and the wider international community: Raisi is not a leader but an international war criminal, and should be treated as such.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz told the crowd: “For too long the Iranian people have suffered at the hands of (Supreme Leader) Ali Khamenei and Ebrahim Raisi. Their cries for freedom and justice ring across the world and have the support of freedom-loving Americans.

“We will stand with the families of those massacred, and strenuously encourage the Biden administration to hold Raisi and Khamenei accountable through sanctions and pressing for Raisi’s prosecution for crimes against humanity.”

Many people Arab News talked to during the event said their loved ones were killed in the late 1980s while Raisi, at the time a prosecutor for Tehran, presided over what Amnesty International dubbed “death commissions” — sham trials of political prisoners following the Iran-Iraq war. Thousands were executed for their affiliation with or support for Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian revolutionary opposition group that fell out of favor with the regime and was violently crushed. Everyone Arab News spoke to during the rally said they continue to support the MEK.

Eshrat Dehghan said that she lost three of her sons to the death commissions. For these crimes and thousands of others, she said Raisi “should not be allowed into the UN.”

“The Biden administration should support the people of Iran and the MEK in their struggle against the regime,” said Dehghan, who was herself tortured by the regime, as a result of which she has to use a stick to help her walk.

Listed for many years as a terrorist organization, the MEK was removed from the US and European terror lists in 2012. This was a victory for Lincoln Bloomfield, who had served as assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs in the Bush Administration and exhaustively investigated the claims of terrorism leveled against the MEK.

He told Arab News that his investigation found no evidence that the group had targeted the US or its allies with terrorism.

“If there had been any indication of targeting civilians, children or innocent people that would be different — but this is legitimate resistance to tyranny,” he said.

Marc Ginsberg, a former adviser on the Middle East to the White House, and a long-time US diplomat, told Arab News that a lethal drone attack on an Israeli-owned cargo tanker on Saturday was “just one more reason” to hold Raisi and the Iranian regime to account.

“I’m in favor of doing everything possible to undermine this regime and its ability to continue to repress, to instigate violence and incite terrorism in the Middle East,” he said. “Even if (the regime) agrees to roll back their violations of the Iran nuclear agreement, that’s still never going to accomplish the objective of preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.”

The former ambassador also said that aside from its nuclear activity, Tehran continues to refuse to halt its other destabilizing activities throughout the Middle East, and would use the “lifeline” of sanctions relief to further those activities.

“They will not agree to constraints on their ballistic-missile program and they certainly are not going to give up their support for Hezbollah (in Lebanon), Hamas (in Palestine), the Houthi rebels (in Yemen) or Syria’s Assad regime,” said Ginsberg.

“All they want is sanctions relief. Their question is: how little can we give up in exchange for sanctions relief? For them, sanctions relief is the only game in town.”


Nine of Gazan doctor’s 10 children killed in Israeli air strike

Updated 9 sec ago
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Nine of Gazan doctor’s 10 children killed in Israeli air strike

  • Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar also saw her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, critically injured
  • Couple’s only surviving child, 11-year-old boy, was severely wounded

LONDON: A pediatrician working in southern Gaza has lost nine of her 10 children in an Israeli air strike that hit her family home, in what fellow medics have described as an “unimaginable” tragedy.

Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, who was on duty at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis at the time of the strike, also saw her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, critically injured.

The couple’s only surviving child, an 11-year-old boy, was severely wounded and underwent emergency surgery on Friday, according to reports.

“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” said Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. “In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted, Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”

Graphic footage shared by Palestinian Civil Defense, and verified by media outlets including the BBC, showed the remains of small children being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building near a petrol station in Khan Younis.

British surgeon Dr. Graeme Groom, who is volunteering at Nasser hospital, said Dr Al-Najjar’s surviving son was his final patient of the day.

“He was very badly injured and seemed much younger as we lifted him onto the operating table,” he said in a video posted to social media.

Groom added that the child’s father, also a physician at the same hospital, had “no political and no military connections and doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media,” calling the strike “a particularly sad day.”

He continued: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here… and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”

Relative Youssef Al-Najjar, speaking to AFP, made an emotional plea: “Enough. Have mercy on us. We plead to all countries, the international community, the people, Hamas, and all factions to have mercy on us. We are exhausted from the displacement and the hunger.”

Dr. Victoria Rose, another British doctor at the hospital, said the family had lived near a petrol station and speculated that the strike may have caused or been worsened by a large explosion. “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza,” she said.

The Israel Defence Forces did not comment directly on the strike, but in a general statement said it had hit more than 100 targets across Gaza in a 24-hour period.

The Hamas-run health ministry reported at least 74 Palestinian deaths in that time frame alone.

The UN has warned that Gaza may be entering its “cruelest phase” of the war, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denouncing Israel’s restrictions on aid as exacerbating a humanitarian catastrophe.

Although Israel partially lifted its blockade this week, allowing limited aid to enter, the UN says the deliveries fall far short of the 500–600 trucks of supplies needed daily to meet basic needs for the territory’s 2.1 million people.

Since Israel launched its offensive after Hamas militants stormed into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 251 others, on Oct. 7, 2023, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which includes women and children in its total but does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

-ENDS-


Erdogan, Syria’s Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul

Updated 50 min 35 sec ago
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Erdogan, Syria’s Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul

  • Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa
  • The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was holding talks with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Istanbul on Saturday, news channel CNN Turk and state media said, broadcasting video of the two leaders greeting each other.

The visit comes the day after US President Donald Trump’s administration issued orders that it said would effectively lift sanctions on Syria. Trump had pledged to unwind the measures to help the country rebuild after its devastating civil war.

Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa as he emerged from his car at the Dolmabahce Palace on the shores of the Bosphorus Strait in Turkiye’s largest city.

The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks, as well as Turkiye’s defense minister and the head of the Turkish MIT intelligence agency, according to Turkiye’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.

The Syrian delegation also included Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

MIT chief Ibrahim Kalin and Sharaa this week held talks in Syria on the Syrian Kurdish YPG militant group laying down its weapons and integrating into Syrian security forces, a Turkish security source said previously.


US strike on Yemen kills Al-Qaeda members: Yemeni security sources

Updated 24 May 2025
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US strike on Yemen kills Al-Qaeda members: Yemeni security sources

  • “Five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan
  • Washington once regarded the group as the militant network’s most dangerous branch

DUBAI: Five Al-Qaeda members have been killed in a strike blamed on the United States in southern Yemen, two Yemeni security sources told AFP on Saturday.

“Residents of the area informed us of the US strike... five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan province, which borders the seat of Yemen’s internationally-recognized government in Aden.

“The US strike on Friday evening north of Khabar Al-Maraqsha killed five,” said a second source, referring to a mountainous area known to be used by Al-Qaeda.

The second security source added that, though the names of those killed in the strike were not known, it was believed one of Al-Qaeda’s local leaders was among the dead.

Washington once regarded the group, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the militant network’s most dangerous branch.

Born in 2009 from the merger of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi factions, AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of Yemen’s war, which since 2015 has pitted the Iran-backed Houthi militants against a Saudi-led coalition backing the government.

Earlier this month, the United States agreed a ceasefire with the Houthis, who have controlled large swathes of Yemen for more than a decade, ending weeks of intense American strikes on militant-held areas of the country.

The Houthis began firing at shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, prompting military strikes by the US and Britain beginning in January 2024.

The conflict in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, although fighting decreased significantly after a UN-negotiated six-month truce in 2022.


Iraq seeks deal to swap kidnapped academic for jailed Iranian

Updated 24 May 2025
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Iraq seeks deal to swap kidnapped academic for jailed Iranian

  • Iraqi officials are working on a deal to release kidnapped Israeli academic Elizabeth Tsurkov in exchange for an Iranian jailed for murdering an American civilian
  • Tsurkov was kidnapped in March 2023 allegedly by paramilitary group Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq

BAGHDAD: Baghdad is working on a deal to free kidnapped Israeli-Russian academic Elizabeth Tsurkov in exchange for an Iranian jailed in Iraq for murdering a US civilian, security sources said Saturday.
The deal depends on US approval, the senior Iraqi security officials told AFP, asking to remain anonymous because the matter is considered sensitive.
Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University, was kidnapped in Baghdad in March 2023.
There was no claim of responsibility for her abduction, but Israel accused Iraq’s powerful Kataeb Hezbollah of holding Tsurkov.
The Iran-backed armed faction has implied it was not involved.
Iraq has been working to solve the issue which “depends on the Americans’ approval for the release of the Iranian accused of killing an American citizen,” a senior security source said.
The three Iraqi sources said that Washington has not yet agreed to this.
“The Americans have not yet agreed to one of the conditions, which is the release of the Iranian who is being held for killing an American citizen,” one official said.
Iraq is both a significant ally of Iran and a strategic partner of the United States, and has for years negotiated a delicate balancing act between the two foes.
The Iranian and another four Iraqis were sentenced to life in prison in Iraq for murdering American civilian Stephen Troell, who was shot dead in Baghdad in November 2022.
In December last year, the US Justice Department announced that a “complaint was unsealed... charging” Iranian Mohammad Reza Nouri, “an officer” in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with allegedly orchestrating the killing.
Tsurkov, who is likely to have entered Iraq on her Russian passport, traveled to the country as part of her doctoral studies.
Security and diplomatic sources have told AFP they do not rule out the possibility that she may have been taken to Iran.
In November 2023, Iraqi channel Al Rabiaa TV aired the first hostage video of Tsurkov since her abduction.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or to determine whether she spoke freely in it or under coercion.


British Airways cancels Israel flights until August

Updated 24 May 2025
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British Airways cancels Israel flights until August

  • UK carrier suspended route to Tel Aviv after Houthi attack on Ben Gurion Airport in May
  • Air France flights remain suspended but Delta, Aegean flights recommenced this week

LONDON: There will be no British Airways flights from the UK to Israel until at least August, the airline has said.

BA cited security concerns for the decision, having suspended flights to Tel Aviv in May following a Houthi missile attack that injured six people at Ben Gurion International Airport. The airline subsequently evacuated staff staying in the city to the Austrian capital Vienna.

A BA spokesman said in a statement: “We continually monitor operating conditions and have made the decision to suspend our flights to and from Tel Aviv, up to and including 31 July. We’ve apologised to our customers for the inconvenience.”

A message on the airline’s website for the route reads: “Sorry, we have no flights available. Please edit your search to find other routes.” The next scheduled flight from London to Tel Aviv is on Aug. 1.

Air France has halted flights in and out of Israel until at least May 26. Greek airline Aegean resumed flights to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, while US carrier Delta commenced daily flights from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Ben Gurion on Monday.  Both had suspended their routes following the Houthi attack.