Dec.10 – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said he had invited Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to visit Moscow early next year.
The comment, which was made to reporters on Wednesday followed a meeting with Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during which the state leaders discussed Iran.
Putin also held a meeting with US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, to discuss the Iran nuclear talks. The invitation comes as discussions to revive the nuclear deal continue to stall.
The US Navy confiscated more than 180 Iranian missiles and an estimated 1.1 million barrels of Iranian petroleum products, in what the US State Department called the US government’s “largest-ever forfeitures of fuel and weapons shipments from Iran.”
The missiles and petroleum products were seized from two vessels in the Arabian Sea — which holds the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf — while conducting routine maritime security operations, and belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a State Department press release.
COVID-19 infections rose sharply in Iran, as official government departments released figures announcing 3,309 new cases, and 90 deaths in the last 24 hours.
The government’s COVID statistics have been criticized by researchers and medical staff inside the country, who say the figures are likely to be much higher.
Responding to the crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed to deliver vaccine storage cooling systems to remote and underprivileged areas of the country in order to help preserve the vaccines and ensure they remain at the right temperature while in storage.
And Iran’s youth Paralympic team led the way at the 4th Asian Youth Para Games in Bahrain, winning 122 medals including 44 gold, placing them at the top of the medals table.
Highlights from the games included Iran’s men’s wheelchair basketball team who scored a 117 to 18 win over Iraq, and the debut of Para Taekwando, in which all participating nations took home a medal.
