Following the assassination of former Quds Force chief, General Qassem Soleimani, U.S. special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, said Soleimani’s successor, Esmail Ghaani, would meet the same fate if he killed Americans.
Washington had blamed Soleimani for orchestrating attacks against U.S. troops in the Middle East, through the use of Iran’s extensive proxies.
Tehran threatened to pull out of the nuclear agreement altogether, after Britain, France and Germany triggered a dispute mechanism inside the JCPOA designed to launch arbitration proceedings with bodies like the United Nations. French President Emanuel Macron vowed not to let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, and said he would take a tough approach with Iran on the nuclear deal. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would never seek nuclear weapons, with or without a deal.
Arguments continued over the black box belonging to a Ukrainian airliner, which crashed in Iran when Iranian officials accidentally shot the commercial plane down with missiles. Iran asked U.S. and French authorities for equipment to access the data from the black box, sparking an angry response from Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who demanded that the cockpit and flight recorders should be sent to France. Kiev asked for the recorders to be sent to Ukraine.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency (USCIS) announced that Iranian nationals would no longer be eligible for E-1 and E-2 trade and investment visas. Iranians who currently hold these visas were advised to leave the country as soon as their visas expired, or to apply for other types of visas where possible.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued another round of sanctions, this time targeting Chinese companies accused of engaging with Iran’s petrochemical industry, in breach of previous sanctions. Sanctions are an integral part of the Trump Administration’s Maximum Pressure Campaign Against Iran.
And a boy who tore a banner showing General Qassem Soleimani’s face was arrested, according to the Police Chief of Tehran, Brigadier General Hossein Rahimi. Iran’s Fars News agency then published an audio recording of Soleimani’s brother who appears to forgive the boy for destroying the poster in the recording. Videos of Iranians pulling down Soleimani’s pictures after mass funeral processions for the former General went viral on social media.
- Kayhan Life’s Editor, Nazenin Ansari, interviewed novelist Ingrid Leksand (not her real name), about women’s rights and their sexuality in revolutionary Iran.
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- Detained British-Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert said she was offered her freedom by Revolutionary Guards in exchange for espionage.
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- The Journalists Association of Tehran Province criticized Iran’s State media for the way in which it handled its coverage of the Ukrainian plane that crashed in Iran.
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- Several high profile artists attended a vigil for the victims of the Ukrainian plane crash, in Tehran.
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