Tag Archives: Iran

Why are ‘hostile’ states trying to hack into UK coronavirus research? Why not pool resources?

Doesn’t this say everything about the stupidity of our politicians – not just in the UK but across the globe.

Having created an atmosphere of distrust for no particular reason than they don’t like Johnny Foreigner’s politics, now that we should all be working together to beat Covid-19, it seems we’re trying to steal from each other instead.

And if Russia, Iran and China are trying to get into our research systems, what might the UK be trying to steal from them?

Hostile states are attempting to hack British universities and scientific facilities to steal research related to Covid-19, including vaccine development, cybersecurity experts have warned.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said the proportion of such targeted cyber-attacks had increased, branding the criminal activity “reprehensible”.

It is understood that nations including Iran and Russia are behind the hacking attempts, while experts have said China is also a likely perpetrator.

There are thought to be dozens of universities and institutions with biomedical capacity working on Covid-19 research, ranging from new diagnostic and antibody tests to experimental treatment.

However, it is understood there have been no successful attacks on universities or research institutions to date.

Saving lives is more important than international rivalries – to anybody who isn’t a jingoistic sabre-rattling fool.

The best thing to do is make all our research freely available – because then nobody will have to cover the same ground – and tell those foreign powers they didn’t need to go to the trouble of trying to steal it.

Source: Hostile states trying to steal coronavirus research, says UK agency | Espionage | The Guardian

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Iran Crisis: Johnson paralysed as Nazanin faces even longer prison term

Nazanin: Thanks to Boris Johnson’s uselessness, it’s doubtful she’s smiling now.

Back in the day, if a British citizen faced harm abroad, the prime minister would snap into action immediately.

Lord Palmerston sent a gunboat and blockaded Athens in the Don Pacifico affair, to quote just one example from 1850.

Today, 170 years later, we’re stuck with Boris Johnson. He has already spent the last two years letting down Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, falsely imprisoned in an Iranian jail, and now that Donald Trump has made her situation even more precarious, it seems he’ll continue as he started.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces a possible increase in her sentence as a reprisal against the US and its allies over the airstrike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

And Boris Johnson, facing demands from her husband Richard for a meeting to establish how the government plans to keep her – and other dual-nationality prisoners – safe, is doing exactly nothing.

He remains on holiday in the billionaires’ playground of Mustique while British citizens face the consequences of our so-called ally’s actions.

And a fat lot of good he’s doing us there.

Source: Iran crisis: Richard Ratcliffe demands meeting with Boris Johnson over wife Nazanin’s ‘desperate’ situation after Soleimani killing | The Independent

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Remember Nazanin? Johnson doesn’t – so other Brits on hunger strike in Iran will be ignored

Imprisoned: British-Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert is one of many UK (or part-UK) citizens languishing in an Iranian prison because Boris Johnson is too busy sunning himself to do anything about it.

Richard Ratcliffe wrote about this back in November, when we had a chance to bring in a government that would help UK citizens wrongly convicted in foreign lands.

He referred to the fact that, after his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed on a false charge of spying, others have also been arrested, accused and imprisoned.

In an open letter to Boris Johnson, he wrote: “Other British Iranians have been arrested and sentenced, particularly in Spring 2018 and again this summer.

“The UK now has more prisoners held in Evin prison than any of its allies.”

Mr Johnson had worsened Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s situation when he made a false statement about her in Parliament, which the Iranian government had seized, intending to use it to double her five-year sentence.

The Iranian government has linked her plight with its demand for the payment of an arms debt said to be owed by the UK to Iran (from a government company called IMS).

As Mr Ratcliffe stated, the Iranian government has also arrested other British, or part-British, citizens.

Among these are Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, held in Evin prison since 2018 on a 10-year sentence for spying.

She has now begun a hunger strike, alongside French-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah.

It won’t do her any good. Nazanin went on hunger strike, along with her husband, last year. It attracted no interest – from either the Iranian government or the British.

We may hope that the Australian government has more concern for the welfare of its joint citizens than the British under Boris Johnson. He couldn’t care less.

And Nazanin?

She celebrated (if you can call it that) her birthday on December 26:

Neither Boris Johnson nor Dominic Raab have any interest in helping Nazanin, let alone Ms Moore-Gilbert.

Boris Johnson is working harder on his suntan, over in the billionaires’ playground island of Mustique.

The UK had a chance to elect a government that takes the welfare of its citizens more seriously – but we blew it.

Let us hope, for Ms Moore-Gilbert’s sake, that the Australian government takes its duties more seriously.

Source: Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert on hunger strike in Iranian jail | Australia news | The Guardian

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Hypocrites challenge Corbyn’s call for evidence in tanker controversy

Blaze: An oil tanker burns in the Gulf of Oman. But was Iran really responsible?

Isn’t it childish that, in this age of climate change and environmental catastrophe caused by fossil fuels, our leaders are squabbling over oil again?

The Conservative government has supported claims by the United States that attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman – on one of the world’s most important tanker routes – were caused by Iran.

Apparently the removal of a mine from one of the tankers by Iranian special forces was portrayed as proof of that country’s guilt by the US government under Donald Trump. He said he guessed one of the mines used to attack the ships did not explode “and it had Iran written all over it”.

The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, under prime ministerial wannabe Jeremy Hunt, said an investigation by the United Arab Emirates had concluded that the attacks had been caused by a “sophisticated state actor”, and Mr Hunt said he was satisfied that the actor in question was Iran.

Let’s pause for a moment and compare this behaviour with the Tory government’s response to United Nations claims that its policies had caused an increase in poverty here – DWP secretary Amber Rudd, and Theresa May, said it was impossible for such a conclusion to be formed after such a short period collecting evidence; less than two weeks. The report on the tankers has appeared in less than two days, it seems.

So we have an arguable double-standard in the Tory government’s stance.

But that hasn’t stopped ministers from attacking Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, simply for suggesting that a little conclusive evidence should be collected first:

Happily, the response from the public has been to challenge the Tories. Consider, for example, this reponse to Mr Hunt:

Let’s face it – a previous UK government tried to convince us that a war with Iraq was a good idea, based on evidence that was later disproved. That was in alliance with the United States, too.

It is the attack on Mr Corbyn that is most offensive, though:

https://twitter.com/AutisticOu/status/1139940423982616576

https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1139805044210110464

https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1139885137481650178

That is the fact of this matter.

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Remember Nazanin? After Tories forgot her, London’s Labour Mayor has called for her to be freed

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Fair play to Sadiq Khan, Labour’s Mayor of London, for bringing the plight of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe back to public attention.

Nazanin, as you should well recall, is a charity worker who was jailed in 2016 on trumped-up charges of trying to engineer a “soft” revolt against the Iranian regime, when in fact she had been celebrating that country’s New Year with family members who live there.

Boris Johnson, as UK Foreign Secretary, made matters infinitely worse for her when he stupidly suggested that the Iranian authorities’ claims were right and she had been training journalists.

He travelled to Iran to try to secure Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release but instead only succeeded in promising to hand over nearly half a billion pounds that the UK had been withholding from Iran’s rulers since the 1970s.

I seem to recall that he expected to receive Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe in return but that hasn’t happened. What a buffoon.

Today – December 26, 2018 – is her 40th birthday. Husband Richard Ratcliffe issued a joint statement with London Mayor Sadiq Khan to mark the date.

They said: “Nazanin has been wrongly detained in an Iranian prison for over two years. She has done nothing wrong, has broken no laws. The charges against her are completely false.

“She is innocent and should not be kept in prison, separated for so long from her family and her young daughter. While she’s imprisoned, Nazanin continues to suffer both physically and mentally.

“We, and indeed the whole country, know what a travesty of justice it is that Nazanin continues to be detained. Her case, and also those of other dual-nationality prisoners being wrongly held in Iran, have rightly attracted global interest and deep concern.

“London is home to a large Iranian community who make a valuable contribution to this great, diverse city. Together, we are united in calling on the Iranian authorities to release Nazanin immediately along with the others who are being wrongly detained, to allow them to return home and be reunited with their loved ones.”

The appeal –

– has attracted support on the social media:

The Iranian authorities will do whatever they want, of course.

They know they have a source of leverage against the UK government, and have already used it to their advantage.

The reminder that British political organisations have not forgotten her is welcome – even new Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has raised the issue again with the Iranians.

But I think the UK will need a lot more leverage of its own before she is returned to her husband and family. Let us hope I am mistaken.

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Netanyahu echoes Hitler. Will his followers call ‘anti-Semitism!’ on those who point this out?

Benjamin Netanyahu: echoing Adolf Hitler.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lowered himself to baiting his critics – trying to lure them into apparent displays of anti-Semitism – by paraphrasing Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler in a comment on Twitter.

He stated, in a sabre-rattling speech aimed at Iran: “The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.”

As you can see from the response by Evolve Politics, Hitler said something almost identical in 1923: “The whole of nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak.”

It is true that one of the examples of anti-Semitism listed with the IHRA working definition is “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”.

For some, that would be enough. We know several right-wing Labour MPs who would scream “anti-Semitism” if anybody compared Netanyahu with Hitler.

However – and this is a biggie:

The working definition of anti-Semitism itself states that examples such as that listed above are “non-legally binding”, only “to guide IHRA in its work”, and are indications of what “might” be manifestations, “taking into account the overall context”.

So – as Martin Odoni clarifies in this Critique Archives article, “the notorious ‘examples’ in the IHRA definition… are not meant to be seen as cast-iron proof of anti-Semitic attitudes. They are merely meant to be seen as clues for ‘where to look’, as it were. Where these behaviours are seen, the person or people demonstrating them might be anti-Semitic in their intentions, and so it is advisable to investigate.”

So the IHRA accepts that drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis may not be inherently anti-Semitic – and one occasion in which it most certainly would not is if the Israeli prime minister paraphrased the words of Hitler.

Furthermore, such behaviour encourages unfavourable analysis of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians – not direct comparisons with the Nazis’ persecution of European Jews, although it is clear that, as Hitler believed the Jews to be weak, Netanyahu applies the same description to Palestinians.

So, in context, there is nothing anti-Semitic about this tweet by Craig Murray, no matter how much the pro-Israeli-government lobby rages about it.

This one, by John Clarke, is a valid expression of opinion:

And duncanpoundcake doesn’t go far enough: Hitler had shouted this crap, long before the Nuremberg rallies:

Marcus Chown’s comment can’t be touched because not only is he absolutely right, but he actually places Netanyahu’s remarks in their correct context:

But it seems the pro-Israeli-government lobby has the mass media neatly muzzled. Tom Clark of Another Angry Voice says it loud and clear:

Where indeed?

And Jill Segger teaches the lesson that Mr Netanyahu and all the supporters of his genocidal regime seem to have forgotten:

We are told – constantly – that the Nazi persecution of the Jews is, indeed, hateful to the Jews.

But the leader of what he himself has described as the “nation-state of the Jewish people” has not only embraced the rhetoric that informed that persecution – he uses it to justify doing what is hateful to his own neighbours in Palestine.

And, to their eternal shame, our mainstream news media are spineless, supine and silent.

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No respite for Nazanin

What a shame.

This was nothing to do with efforts by the Conservative government to negotiate the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from the Iranian prison where she has been unjustly held for so long on false charges.

She had been released for three days to see her daughter, and it had been hoped that this release would be extended. This has not happened.

Just think – if Boris Johnson had been capable of doing his job properly, she could have been back in the UK before Christmas.

Now Mr Johnson is on the backbenches and one has to wonder whether he is even capable of acting responsibly as a constituency MP. Can anyone provide information on this?

And the title of Foreign Secretary has now fallen to Jeremy Hunt, who seems to prefer hobnobbing with murderous dictators, rather than helping UK citizens.

It seems Mr Johnson set the bar so low that Mr Hunt isn’t even trying.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe may be released early – and it’s nothing to do with Boris Johnson

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

At least, that’s the impression This Writer is getting from the announcement today (December 21).

It seems Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe, will be deemed eligible for early release by the Iranian judiciary, as she has served one-third of her prison sentence.

She was detained by the authorities in Iran last year, on charges of trying to incite a “soft” revolt against the Iranian regime by training journalists, when she was trying to return home after a holiday there.

The announcement is a clear snub to UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who recently visited Iran to try to get politicians there to release Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

The judiciary in Iran, like that in the UK, is separate from politicians there – there is a separation of powers which means that politicians will have had nothing to do with the decision.

So what good was Boris Johnson?

All he has done, it seems to This Writer, is make a catastrophic mistake that made Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s situation much worse – by inaccurately claiming he understand that she had been training journalists – and fail to improve matters despite a highly-publicised visit to Iran for that purpose.

Perhaps further information will emerge to suggest that Mr Johnson did have an influence, but in the meantime:

He was incompetent and then he was ineffectual. Boris Johnson should quit.

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Does anybody trust BORIS JOHNSON to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?

Boris Johnson meets his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif [Image: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images].

I don’t.

This Writer firmly believes that Mr Johnson will put his foot in his mouth again – as he and other members of the stupid Conservative government have done continually since Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case was brought up before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last month.

Mr Johnson still refuses to apologise for the imbecilic blunder that made Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s position so much worse. We are told she was likely to be released before Christmas, until Mr Johnson said he believed she had been in Iran to train journalists – unintentionally corroborating the charges under which she was arrested in 2016. For a foreign secretary, that is an unforgivable error.

Worse still is the fact that other members of the stupid Conservative government have tried to justify Mr Johnson’s behaviour by pretending an ignorance of the situation themselves – notably Michael Gove, in an interview with Andrew Marr.

Mr Gove said he did not know what Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been doing in Iran, at a time when the UK government’s line is very firmly that she was on holiday.

Richard Ratcliffe, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, said in an interview published today (December 9) that he did not understand why Mr Gove did this but he did not believe the government had been honest.

“With this government I have expectations, and sometimes it feels like they’ve not been entirely honest with me. So that’s the bit that will provoke me.

“So for instance, Michael Gove saying, ‘I don’t know [why Nazanin was in Iran when she was arrested].” Mr Ratcliffe wrote to the Foreign Office, and Downing Street issued a clarification. “You’ve got some citizen reminding cabinet ministers of what their own policy is. Mental.”

Mental is the word – especially when describing Boris Johnson going on a mission to free Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe from a fate to which he consigned her with his own stupidity.

Boris Johnson has arrived in Tehran, where he is expected to lobby for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman who has been imprisoned there for nearly two years.

The foreign secretary landed in the Iranian capital on Saturday morning, where he will meet his counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to discuss his “grave concerns” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other dual-nationals.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been told she will appear in court on Sunday facing new charges relating to espionage that could result in her five-year sentence being extended by as much as 10 years.

Johnson has denied these additional charges are due to his error in telling a foreign affairs select committee in November that she had been in Iran to train journalists.

Source: Boris Johnson arrives in Iran to discuss release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe | Politics | The Guardian

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UK is defying international sanctions to pay Iran more than £400m. Nothing to do with saving Boris Johnson’s career…

Boris Johnson faced calls to resign over his gaffe about Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe [Image: Reuters].

Isn’t it amazing how the Tories can coincidentally find huge amounts of money when they’re really struggling?

In this case, it was around £450 million that had been put into a bank account controlled by the High Court by the Labour government in 2002. The money is legitimately owed to Iran, but couldn’t be handed over because that country is subject to international sanctions.

So, what has changed since 2002?

Absolutely nothing. Oh – apart from the fact that Boris Johnson’s career is in danger because of his complete and utter incompetence in the case of a UK citizen imprisoned in Iran.

But – again – we’re told it is completely coincidental that Mr Johnson and Philip Hammond have authorised the payment.

Wouldn’t it be even more of a coincidence if Iran suddenly found itself far more open to the possibility of letting Mr Johnson visit that country and bring Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe back with him?

No. That would be too much to believe.

Don’t get me wrong – any tactic that actually leads to a result in favour of this unjustly-imprisoned wife and mother will be worthwhile.

But we will have to remember that Boris Johnson needs a cynical gimmick to save him.

Britain is to pay Iran more than £400m, the country’s ambassador to the UK has claimed.

Hamid Baeidinejad said the amount was an “outstanding debt” but was not linked to the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – the dual British-Iranian national who is in prison in Iran.

Writing on his Telegram account, Mr Baedinejad said: “An outstanding debt owed by the UK to Tehran will be transferred to the central bank of Iran in the coming days. The payment … has nothing to do with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case.”

It had been widely reported in recent days that the UK Government was considering paying the amount to help persuade Iran to release Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Britain owes Iran around £450m for a cancelled arms deal in the 1970s. The deal was made with the country’s then Shah, and would have seen 1,750 tanks and other vehicles sold by Britain to Iran. However, the Shah was toppled in the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and almost none of the vehicles were delivered. Britain kept the money, sparking a decades-long legal wrangle between the two countries.

The UK has since agreed to pay back some of the debt, but says it is unable to transfer the money because of international sanctions on Iran.

The amount was reportedly transferred to a bank account controlled by the High Court in 2002, but has not been passed on to Iran. Talks to resolve the issue have been going on for many years.

The Sun reported earlier this week that Mr Johnson and Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, have now authorised the payment to Iran to finally settle the dispute.

Officially, the UK Government does not make ransom payments. The Foreign Office said the issue of the debt owed to Iran was unrelated to the case of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Source: Britain to transfer outstanding £400m debt to Iran in coming days, Iranian ambassador says

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