British Authorities Alert Ships After Maritime Incident In Red Sea

Roohollah Firooznam ran a business for 12 years which provided the equipment to Iran's intelligence services, including the IRGC.

The cameras were used to monitor detainees in prisons where torture was used, and to watch political opponents, the Global News reported.

Senior members of the intelligence ministry were directors of Firooznam’s company, while a former vice-president of Iran was a shareholder. Firooznam's business partner in a separate venture was a high-ranking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander who had previously spent a decade guarding Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Despite allegations of involvement with Iran's regime, Firooznam managed to obtain a travel visa from the Canadian embassy in Turkey in 2018, ostensibly for visiting tourist attractions. Upon arriving in Toronto, he engaged the services of an immigration lawyer and applied for refugee status.

Earlier this year, an Ontario judge sanctioned his deportation, citing his complicity in Iran's crimes against humanity.

Firooznam, a former member of the IRGC naval branch turned CEO, claimed ignorance of the regime's abuses until 2017. He claimed that he took action against the regime upon discovering that his cameras were used against anti-government opposition.

However, the Canadian Refugee Board rejected his refugee claim in 2021, asserting his complicity in Iran's crimes against humanity. In response, Firooznam filed a new case in the Federal Court of Appeal in November 2023, seeking expedited processing of his immigration application.

Reuters reported Thursday that deputy national security adviser Jon Finer has said that the Biden administration thinks the IRGC is behind the attacks, helping with planning and action.

"We believe that they are involved in the conduct of these attacks, the planning of them, the execution of them, the authorization of them and ultimately they support them," he told the Aspen Security Forum.

This is the first time the IRGC is directly linked to Houthi operations by a US official.

US National Security spokesman John Kirby took Iran to task on Wednesday for destabilizing the region by providing financial and military assistance to extremist militant groups, such as Yemeni Houthis.

“We know that the Houthis are supported by Iran, not just politically and philosophically but, of course, with weapon systems,” he stressed.

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The Biden administration has been trying to avoid conflict with Iran ever since Hamas forces attacked Israel, fearing that the war on Gaza could expand and set the whole region ablaze.

A Politico report Wednesday suggested that senior Biden administration officials were against targeting Houthis for now, despite the marked increase in Houthi activities in the Red sea, which has forced two US warships to engage militarily.

On Wednesday, the USS Mason intercepted and shot down a drone launched from a Houthi-controlled area. Three days earlier, USS Carney shot down three drones after it received distress calls from vessels that had come under attack from Iran-backed Houthis in the Red Sea.

The Houthis say their attacks are in response to the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which began after Hamas rampaged Israel on 7 October, killing a thousand people.

On Thursday, the US treasury sanctioned 13 people and entities over claims they provided “tens of millions of dollars” in Iran-linked funds to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“The Houthis continue to receive funding and support from Iran,” the under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism Brian Nelson said. “Treasury will continue to disrupt the financial facilitation and procurement networks that enable these destabilizing activities.”

Iran of course denies involvement in the missile and drone attacks by the Houthis on Israel and vessels in the Red Sea. The official line from the regime spokespersons is that militant groups linked with Tehran act independently.

Earlier in the week, a senior adviser to Ali Khamenei said the same about Hamas – that the group had the means necessary to plan and execute operations, notwithstanding the fact, he suggested, that Iran would help the group militarily if it had access to Gaza Strip.

Asked about the future of the conflict and the hopes for a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, Kamal Kharrazi told Aljazeera, “this is their own business, of course. We have our own positions but we’re not going to dictate our positions to others.”

The former foreign minister of the Islamic Republic reiterated, however, that the regime didn’t “believe in” a two state solution. “Israel itself is not supporting this plan… and it’s not practical,” Kharrazi said, “We believe the final solution must be one state, composed of Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

The Islamic Republic has for long maintained this ambiguous, sit-on-the-fence politics, sending mixed messages on their intentions and their actions. In recent years, this has been largely helped by the Biden administration’s leniency, which many in Washington say has emboldened the regime and its proxies in the region.

“It [is] President Biden who refuses to respond to the recent attacks on American troops by Iran in Syria, in Iraq, in the Red Sea,” Senator John Kennedy told Fox News Thursday.

“The sad reality is that our enemies - China, Russia, North Korea, Iran - are not scared of President Biden. And for good reason," he said. “The Biden administration would rather debate whether man can breastfeed than protect the interests of this country.”

The official also said that no casualties and no damage to infrastructure was reported. Earlier, Al Mayadeen television affiliated with the Iranian government reported attacks on Baghdad's Green Zone, where the US embassy is located.

Explosions were heard near the US embassy in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone early on Friday, according to social media videos verified by Reuters.

Embassy spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters and there has been no official US announcement yet. Social media reports also said sirens calling on people to "duck and cover" were activated.

It was not immediately clear whether the embassy's air defense systems were activated or whether there was damage.

US forces at military bases in Iraq and Syria have faced more than 70 attacks since mid-October claimed by an Iran-backed umbrella organization of Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim armed groups, though diplomatic missions have been spared. The US military has retaliated against militant targets on a few occasions.

Yemen’s Houthis, backed by Tehran, have also launched attacks on commercial shipping and US naval vessels in the Red Sea in the past two weeks. The US this week accused Iran of involvement in assisting the Houthi drone and missile attacks.

The involved individuals and firms were “responsible for providing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of foreign currency generated from the sale and shipment of Iranian commodities” to Yemeni Houthis, the US Department of Treasury announced in a statement on Thursday. 

Supported by the IRGC extraterritorial Quds force, the financing system operated through “a complex network of exchange houses and companies in multiple jurisdictions,” the statement added. 

The Department of Treasury identified the mastermind behind this complicated network as Sa’id al-Jamal who served as the financial facilitator for Houthis and IRGC Quds force. 

Washington said the sanctions target “an important conduit through which Iranian money reaches the country’s militant partners in Yemen.”

Though the Islamic Republic has avoided any direct military involvement in the Israel-Hamas conflict, the regime has used its allies such as Houthis and Hezbollah to attack Israeli and American targets in the region.

Houthis have intensified their attacks since the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas collapsed on December 1. On Sunday, an American warship and multiple commercial ships came under attack in the Red Sea.

“The Houthis continue to receive funding and support from Iran, and the result is unsurprising: unprovoked attacks on civilian infrastructure and commercial shipping, disrupting maritime security and threatening international commercial trade,” Brian E. Nelson, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, stressed.

Though US warships have intercepted most of the missiles and drones launched by Houthis of Yemen, the Biden administration is receiving more and more criticism over its failure to deter Iran and its proxies in the Middle East.

During the meeting, Raisi once again accused Israel of carrying out “war crimes and genocide” in Gaza, adding that the United States and other Western countries support Israel’s military campaign.

He criticized what he called “the unilateralism and unfairness of the global system,” saying they are now best reflected in the Gaza crisis.

The repeated allegations of Tehran officials against Israel come against the backdrop of Iran’s openly admitted assistance to Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and its other proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah and Yemeni Houthis.

Their meeting came a day after the Russian president visited the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to hold talks over the global oil market and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Raisi praised Tehran-Moscow cooperation in the fields of energy and agriculture, further urging the expansion of ties between the two countries.

Putin told his Iranian counterpart that the volume of Tehran-Moscow trade has reached 5 billion dollars, adding that Russia is ready to expand its ties with Iran in different fields, especially in the field of energy.

In 2022, Iran proudly announced the signing of the “largest oil and gas agreements in the country's history worth $40 billion.” However, Russia has not converted any of these memoranda of understanding (MoUs) into contracts.

About a decade ago, Iran also signed dozens of oil and gas MoUs with various Russian companies, none of which were executed.

Speaking about Raisi-Putin meeting, US National Security spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that “it’s certainly not implausible” that Moscow and Tehran would improve their military relations.

Since mid-2022, Iran has reportedly supplied hundreds of kamikaze Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to Russia, which have been extensively used to target civilian infrastructure and cities.