In a first for Europe, an Iranian official was put on trial this week, after being charged with trying to bomb an anti Iran government meeting in France in 2018.

Iranian diplomat Assadolah Assadi, and three other Iranians went on trial in Belgium for terrorism offenses linked to an alleged plan to attack an opposition group and its members at a conference whose speakers included U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Assadi said he would try to avoid trial by raising his diplomatic status, which he said granted him immunity from the proceedings.

A senior military figure in Iran said he would run for president in the country’s next elections set to take place in 2021.

Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, who has said Iran’s defense strategy would be non negotiable in any future JCPOA discussions, is believed to be backed by Ayatollah Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Dehghan, who is a conservative hardliner, currently serves as Khamenei’s special advisor on military matters.

Outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump imposed another round of sanctions aimed at the Iranian government. The penalties targeted Chinese and Russian companies which the Trump Administration said had enabled Iran’s nuclear programme.

Elliott Abrams, the U.S. State Department’s special representative for Iran said more sanctions would be on the way, and would focus on armaments, weapons of mass destruction and human rights violations.

And Australian-British academic Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert was released from prison in Iran on Thursday in a transaction which may have combined a prisoner swap involving three jailed Iranians. Ms. Moore-Gilbert had been charged with espionage, which she had denied, and had been given a 10-year sentence.

The news comes after the announcement that Swedish-Iranian academic Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali who has been detained in Iran since 2017, has been transferred to Evin prison and his death sentence expedited. Responding to the announcement that Dr. Jalali’s execution had been pushed forward, Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran said the decision to execute Dr. Djalali was “unconscionable” and called on the international community to condemn the decision in the strongest terms.