Iran news in brief, February 6, 2018

Iran news in brief, February 6, 2018

1- In Speech, Trump Calls Iran 'A Radical Regime,' Defends Withdrawal From Nuke Deal

U.S. President Donald Trump called the Iranian government a “radical regime,’ and he vowed that Tehran would never acquire nuclear weapons.

Trump made the comments February 5, during his State of the Union speech before a joint session of Congress.

"They do bad, bad things," Trump said, as he accused the Iranian government of being anti-Semitic.

Trump defended his decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, which lifted crippling sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear ambitions.

He said: “My Administration has acted decisively to confront the world's leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran,”.

Trump said“To ensure this corrupt dictatorship never acquires nuclear weapons, I withdrew the United States from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. And last fall, we put in place the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a country,”.

2- Iran Regime Criticizes Italy, Greece For Not Buying Oil And Iraq For Non-Payment

Iran Regime’s oil minister on Tuesday criticized Greece and Italy for not buying its oil despite US waivers and said they had not offered Tehran any explanation for their decision.

Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency: “No European country is buying oil from Iran except Turkey,”.

Bijan Zanganeh also had sharp words for neighboring Iraq, which buys large quantities of Iranian natural gas for generating electricity. He said that Baghdad continues to buy $200 million of gas from Iran but has stopped paying since U.S. sanctions came into effect.

3- Iran Regime’s Chief Justice: We have no political prisoners

Iran Reime’s Chief Justice said that there were no political prisoners in Iran during a meeting with senior judicial officials.

According to Judicial officials there were more than 200,000 prisoners in Iran’s prisons in 2016 and 2017 which is three times more than the prisons’ capacities.

The Chief Justice criticized requests that political prisoners be included in the “amnesty” and claimed that Iran “currently did not have such criminals”.

This is while lists of thousands of Iranian political prisoners and prisoners of conscience have been published by human rights organizations.

This is not the first time that Iranian officials deny the existence of political prisoners in Iran calling them “security” prisoners.

Iran Regime’s Minister of Foreign Affairs recently said in an interview with an American journalist that “no one is imprisoned in Iran for their beliefs”.

4- Iran: At least eight protests were organized on February 5

At least eight protests were organized on Tuesday, February 5, 2019 in Iran. The municipality workers of Abezhdan city in Khuzestan province and Towhid city in Ilam province, the shareholders of Caspian financial institution in Kermanshah and Ilam, the workers and employees of Ayson Project in Tabriz, the investors of Sekeh Samen website, the members of the Cooperative Housing Company of the workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, and taxi drivers in Khorramabad have held separate protests to request their demands.