Middle East & North Africa

07 August 2023; MEMO: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused the US of encouraging smuggling by sea in the Gulf region, in the latest sign of rising tensions between Tehran and Washington.

"Today, the Americans are targeting oil tankers while helping the maritime smuggling networks in our region," said Khamenei on state television yesterday, Bloomberg News has reported. "This is a major violation on their part."

07 August 2023; MEMO: Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has backed a Jewish settler accused of carrying out a terrorist attack against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, following the killing of 19-year-old Palestinian Qusay Jamal Matan.

07 August 2023; MEMO: The former head of Israel's Mossad spy agency has said that he believes that the occupation state is heading for self-destruction, the religious-Zionist Makor Rishon news outlet reported on Sunday.

Tamir Pardo explained that he came to his conclusion after the signing of the coalition agreement among the current parties in the far-right cabinet, even before the announcement of the judicial reform plan by Minister of Justice Yariv Levin.

RAMALLAH, Aug 6 (NNN-WAFA) – A Palestinian official, yesterday, called on the international community, to list the far-right Israeli party, Otzma Yehudit, headed by Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, as a terror group.

Ben-Gvir’s “party has a … history of inciting the killing of Palestinians,” said Hussein Al-Sheikh, secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, after a member of Ben-Gvir’s party, Friday night, shot and killed a Palestinian in the village of Burqa near Ramallah.

JERUSALEM, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted as saying on Sunday that he would work to change the committee that selects judges, amid a wave of protests over planned legislation which could see the highest court stripped of many of its powers.

Asked about the next phase of legislation on the judiciary, Netanyahu said "it would probably be about the composition of the committee that elects judges". He told Bloomberg: "That's basically what's left."

"Because other things I think we should not legislate," he said, without elaborating.

JERUSALEM, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Washington has condemned as terrorism the killing of a Palestinian by suspected Jewish settlers, in sharpened language that appeared to reflect U.S. frustration with surging violence in the occupied West Bank under Israel's hard-right government.

Israeli police detained two settlers in Friday's incident near Burqa village. According to Palestinians, they were part of a group that threw rocks, torched cars and, when confronted by villagers, shot a 19-year-old dead and wounded several others.

TEHRAN, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Iranian security forces have seized two batches of smuggled weapons and ammunition in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, arresting six suspects, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.

In the first operation, some 20 M1911 pistols and 39 magazines were found concealed in a sedan of an arms trafficking gang driving from Pakistan, Tasnim quoted Sistan and Baluchestan Prosecutor Mehdi Shamsabadi as saying.

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) — Dust and rubble fill the street as an excavator tears off chunks of concrete from an old apartment building. Bystanders and former residents watch from afar as construction equipment tears down the structure. Among the bystanders is Ibrahim Ozaydin, 30, a former resident. He watches the demolition not with worry, but with relief, as his building was marked by officials as unsafe months ago.

Tehran, IRNA – Media sources of the Zionist regime have reported that some 33% of the settlers of the occupied territories, including 56% of the youth, are thinking of migration because of amendments planned in the Israeli judicial law which is viewed as a coup by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Tehran, IRNA – Iranian lawmakers have approved a bill to establish the Dogharoon Special Economic Zone on the Iran-Afghanistan border.

In the Sunday session of the Iranian parliament (Majlis), the legislators discussed a report by the Iranian Parliament Commission on Economy concerning a bill to set up the Dogharoon Special Economic Zone. The bill along with its notes was voted by 160 in favor, 18 against and 10 abstentions.