TOP STORIES
Iran says its latest drone can carry as many as 13 bombs with a turboprop engine that can power it over 1,000 miles at 35,000 feet. But its most distinctive feature is the name stenciled on the matte gray fuselage: “Gaza.” A model of the Iranian defense industry’s new flagship product was exhibited at an international arms fair in Doha this month—the drone’s first display outside Iran, sharing a stage with products from American, Chinese and Turkish rivals. Since the expiration of United Nations restrictions on Iran’s missile and drone exports in October, Tehran has increasingly sold its military wares on the international market, fueling concerns among the U.S. and its allies. The U.N. curbs had been part of the multilateral nuclear pact with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which the U.S. withdrew from under former President Donald Trump in 2018.
Iran Eyes Russia And China For Nuclear Investment, Ties | The Jerusalem Post
Iran is seeking to expand cooperation with Russia and China on nuclear energy issues, according to a report. The Iranian spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Behrouz Kamalvandi, in an interview with Iran’s Tasnim News that was published on Friday, said Iran is seeking to “mobilize our facilities so that we can also use foreign resources and technologies. Countries like Russia and China are our main targets and we have had negotiations with them. We have the necessary legal infrastructure and we will act according to the protocols we have already agreed with them.”
Iran’s Currency Hits A Record Low | Associated Press
Iran’s currency fell to a record low on Sunday, plunging to 613,500 to the dollar, as its people celebrated the Persian New Year. On Sunday, people were trying to exchange rials for foreign currency at Tehran’s main hub of exchange shops in Ferdowsi Street, but most were closed due to the Nowruz holidays, which are run from March 20 to April 2. Mohsen, a 32-year-old employee at one of the exchange shops, said the holiday was contributing to the low prices, “The price is not real, the demand for purchasing dollars is very high, but there are just a few exchange shops open.” He and other Iranians spoke on condition their last names not be used, because of potential repercussions for speaking to foreign media about the country’s economic struggles.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Revealed: Illegal Iran Nuke Site Allegedly Sabotaged By Israel | i24 News
…Jason Brodsky, policy director for the think tank United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told i24NEWS that "This workshop does not appear in the ongoing outstanding safeguards inquiries with Iran that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has been pursuing, so this raises serious safeguards questions for the IAEA and the Islamic Republic.” He added, “Since it was connected to AEOI [Atomic Energy Organization of Iran], it's likely that the workshop focused on centrifuge production or enrichment rather than weaponization, as weaponization activities were absorbed by the Organization for Defensive Innovation and Research, which is part of Iran’s Defense Ministry.”
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iranian Cleric Calls For Nuclear Arms | Iran International
Mohammad Faker Meybodi, a faculty member at the Center for Islamic Sciences, has sparked controversy with his recent remarks advocating for the possession of nuclear arms. Speaking on the historical context of military weaponry as outlined in the Quran, Meybodi emphasized the need for contemporary armaments to deter adversaries effectively. "At the time when the verse related to military weapons was revealed in the Quran, the weapon of that era was the swords and spears... Today, it may be necessary for us to possess nuclear weapons to intimidate the enemy. We must equip ourselves with modern weapons," Meybodi stated.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
Iran Looks To AI To Weather Western Sanctions, Help Military To Fight 'On The Cheap' | Fox News
Iran has made it no secret that it plans to invest heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) to help better its military capabilities, but Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is now turning to Iran’s private sector in a move he thinks will boost his crippling economy. On Sunday, Raisi met with private sector companies to announce Tehran’s intent to invest in digital businesses. Raisi claimed the move would not only help develop Iran’s AI capabilities, but help achieve his goal to grow the economy by 8%, reported pro-government media outlet Tasnim News Agency.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
U.S. Says ISIS Was Responsible For Deadly Moscow Concert Hall Attack | New York Times
A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for the massacre at a Moscow area concert hall, one of the deadliest attacks in Russia in decades, and U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly afterward. The United States collected intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, the branch of the group based in Afghanistan, had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials. ISIS members have been active in Russia, one U.S. official said. After a period of relative quiet, the Islamic State has been trying to increase its external attacks, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials. Most of those plots in Europe have been thwarted, prompting assessments that the group had diminished capabilities.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian Filmmakers Escaping Censorship At Home Finds It Has Followed Them Abroad | NPR
Iranian filmmakers produced a movie about Tehran's crackdown on the 2022 women's protest movement in Iran. They have fled to Turkey but still find it hard to get their message out.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iran’s Khamanei Believes US Will 'Leave' Middle East | The Jerusalem Post
Iran’s Supreme Leader believes the US is in decline in its influence in the Middle East. According to a statement last week, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the current war against Israel, which Iran launched using proxies in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack, has “disrupted” the US goals in the region. The October 7 attack can be read as a turning point in the world order, in which Iran, Russia, Turkey, China, and others see the attack as a major shift that is taking place and seek to exploit it to achieve their goals. The Iranian leader believes the “United States’ long-standing ambition to dominate the region has been undermined by the resilience of the Axis of Resistance,” an article in Iran’s Fars News noted. “The United States is now left with no option but to withdraw from the region,” the leader added, according to the article. He openly boasted of how Iran backs attacks against Israel from “resistance factions” in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. This is the multi-front war that Iran has sought to launch.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
US Says It Struck 3 Houthi Underground Storage Sites In Yemen | AFP
The U.S. military said Friday it had struck three underground storage facilities used by Yemen's Houthis, as the Iran-backed rebels continue to launch attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. U.S. forces "conducted self-defense strikes against three Houthi underground storage facilities in Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen," Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement. It said U.S. forces had also "successfully engaged and destroyed four unmanned aerial vehicles" in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen throughout Friday, while also registering four anti-ship ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis toward the Red Sea.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Purim, the Jewish festival commemorating the salvation of Jews of the Achaemenid Empire from the evil extermination plot of the king’s adviser Haman, has taken an alarming twist during the past few years in Iran. This includes accusing Jews of perpetrating crimes against Iranians in ancient times, as well as limiting or hindering Jewish celebrations of the holiday. This year a picture from the Iranian city of Hamadan went viral, showing a Palestinian flag hung defiantly right at the entrance to the shrine where, according to Jewish tradition, the graves of the heroes of the Book of Esther, Queen Esther and Mordechai, are believed to be; a flag found by the chief rabbi of Iran took him by surprise. This shrine has served as a place of Jewish pilgrimage and has been vandalized and obstructed in the past, and included arson, demonstrations in front of the shrine with Hezbollah flags and signs reading “Death to Israel”. In a country where the right of peaceful assembly is rarely honored unless aligned with, if not ordered by the regime, these demonstrations are even more meaningful.
In Iran, Baha’i Minority Faces Persecution Even After Death | AFP
A flattened patch of earth is all that remains of where the graves once stood – evidence, Iran’s Baha’is say, that their community is subjected to persecution even in death. Beneath the ground in the Khavaran cemetery in the southeastern outskirts of Tehran lie the remains of at least 30 and potentially up to 45 recently-deceased Baha’is, according to the Baha’i International Community (BIC). But their resting places are no longer marked by headstones, plaques and flowers, as they once were, said the BIC. This month, Iranian authorities destroyed them and then leveled the site with a bulldozer.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Sunday that the difference between democratic and authoritarian regimes is that Russia and Iran would not tell the United States if there was going to be a terrorist attack in the U.S. Host Shannon Bream asked Kaine on “Fox News Sunday” whether the southern border can lead to “real danger” within the U.S., pointing to the attack in Russia that has left more than 133 dead in a Moscow concert hall. He first reiterated that the U.S. warned Russia about this kind of attack earlier this year.