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  The operation is being organised by Unit 400, a highly specialised section of the Quds Force which is run by Hamed Abdollahi, a veteran Republican Guard officers who was designated by the US as supporting terrorist activity in 2012.  The African cell is said to be run by Ali Parhoon, another senior Iranian officer in Unit 400. Details of the terror cell’s existence were uncovered following a series of arrests in Chad in April.

  Investigators found that Iran was behind the recruitment and training of men between the ages of 25-35 with the aim of committing terror attacks against Western targets on the continent.

  There are estimated to be around 300 militants who have been recruited by the Revolutionary Guard and have undergone rigorous training at Iranian-run training camps in Syria and Iraq.

  The last batch of recruits were trained at an Iranian base in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf.  Iran’s attempts to establish a new terror operation in Africa follow revelations in The Telegraph earlier this month that British security officials caught terrorists linked to Iran stockpiling tonnes of explosives on the outskirts of London.    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/24/tehran-sets-terror-cells-africa-western-sanctions-bite/

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 Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, told the Commons on Tuesday:  "The US is our closest ally, we talk to them the whole time, we consider any requests that they say carefully, but I cannot envisage any situation where they request or we agree to any moves to go to war.

  "The message we are sending with our partners in the European Union particularly the French and the Germans is that with respect to Iran's nuclear programme, this is a crucial week.”

  Mr. Trump signed an executive order imposing financial sanctions on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's head of state, and several senior military commanders on Monday in retaliation for the downing of a US surveillance drone last week.    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/25/iran-says-sanctions-supreme-leader-mark-permanent-closure-diplomatic/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget

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  The measure would amount to extortion, since Iran is the party most likely to attack shipping in the region, but is consistent with Iran’s official fiction that its military forces work tirelessly to suppress piracy.  “A bill has been provided by the lawmakers which requires the government to receive expenses for providing security to vessels, either military or non-military, in the Strait of Hormuz from them,” senior legislator Hossein Ali Haji Deligani said on Tuesday  .https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/06/25/iran-considers-extracting-toll-for-security-from-foreign-ships-in-strait-of-hormuz/

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   Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times ran a full slate of columns Sunday and Monday attacking the United States’ escalating tensions with Iran, prompted by multiple attacks that Washington has published video proving were acts of the Iranian military.

The Chinese newspaper objected aggressively to the Trump administration’s “stifling and brutal crackdown on the basic well-being of” Iranians via sanctions, and suggested that “China should take active measures to ensure its economic interests and stability in this region.”  It left unclear what those measures should look like….

The columns follow remarks from China’s Communist Party leader Xi Jinping that Beijing is “willing to join hands with the Iranian side” following a meeting in Shanghai and from China’s foreign ministry that the nation seeks the “full and effective implementation” of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known more commonly as the Iran nuclear deal. 

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2019/06/24/chinese-state-media-defends-iran-u-s-is-pushing-the-middle-east-closer-to-war/

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-A facility believed to be an internment camp located north of Kashgar, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, June 2, 2019. 

6-24-19   A young Uyghur woman who worked as the deputy director of a tourist agency in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has died while being questioned in official custody, according to a recording of her mother that was secreted out of the country by members of the Uyghur exile community.

 

  Aytursun Eli, 35, had studied tourism and Japanese before accepting a position at the Hua An Tourism Company in the XUAR’s Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) city and being promoted to deputy director, her mother, Patigul Yasin, said in a purported recording of an interview….“It was on June 4, 2018, when she was called … to go to the police station,” Yasin explains in the recording, which was only recently smuggled out of the XUAR by a “Uyghur exile through various channels” before being passed to the Washington-based World Uyghur Congress and published on IUHRDF’s website.    https://uyghuramerican.org/article/young-uyghur-tour-director-dies-under-questioning-xinjiang-authorities-mother.html