Iran’s Fars News Agency (FNA) reports that Syria’s army has formed a new elite force called the Al-Filq Al-Khamis-Eqteham (Fifth Assault Corps) and is calling on volunteers to join the group.
It is no longer a secret that Iran assists Shiite Houthi group to fight the Saudi-backed government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in Yemen. But a new report published on November 30 provides new evidence of an arms “pipeline” originating from Iran and extending to Yemen and Somalia.
After months of protracted discussions, OPEC members reached a consensus on November 30 to cut collective oil production next year by about 4.5 percent. The news about the first reduction in eight years pushed up oil prices by eight percent to above $50 a barrel. According to the deal, Iran will keep its production level at 3.8 million barrels per day (bpd) – almost the same amount as its pre-sanctions output.
With Shiite militia forces scoring territorial gains in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) feels vindicated. In numerous interviews with Iranian media outlets, senior IRGC officials claim that their support for the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq and Shiite militant groups in Syria has not only saved the two countries from “terrorists and takfiris” but has also warded off the threat of terrorism from spilling over into the Iranian territory.
Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of a British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, says that Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) officials are using his wife as a “bargaining chip” to secure a decades-old £500 [$620] million debt for a tank deal from the British government.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s November 29 remark that Turkey intervened in Syria to topple President Bashar al-Assad has drawn a sharp rebuke from Tehran, Damascus and Moscow.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has announced that the inflation rate for the past 12 months stood at 8.6 percent – down from 11.9 percent from the same period the year before. Previously, the Statistical Center of Iran had put this year’s figure at 7.5 percent.
On November 28, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed in a telephone conversation to coordinate steps about global oil and gas prices as well as on the war in Syria.
In another sign of Tehran’s improving trade and economic ties with regional countries, Iran has overtaken OPEC-member rivals Saudi Arabia and Iraq as Indi
In a remark that is likely to heighten tension in the Gulf region, the Iranian chief of staff of the armed forces has called for setting up naval bases across on the coasts of Yemen and Syria in the future.
On the evening of November 26, security officials tried to arrest Mahmoud Sadeghi, a university lecturer and lawmaker from Tehran – disregarding his parliamentary immunity. But the authorities backed down after Sadeghi’s supporters, including a number of parliamentarians and students, gathered in front of his house to protest the move. The controversy soon turned into the “most heated” political issue in Tehran the following day.
The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, faces an uphill struggle as he prepares for his reelection bid scheduled for May 2017. It was not supposed to be this way. Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, including the United States, was supposed to seal Rouhani’s second term.
After all, the moderate cleric had delivered on his key promise, the lifting of the painful nuclear-related international sanctions. But Rouhani’s hardline opponents inside the Islamic Republic are now increasingly identifying corruption as Rouhani’s Achilles Heel.
On November 22, a senior Iranian official admitted that more than 1,000 combatants dispatched by Iran to fight alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been killed in the Syrian war.