by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Tehran : The US is exerting “in vain” economic pressure on the Iranian nation to divide and turn them against the establishment, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday.
“The enemy’s plan is to create division between the establishment and the people,” Xinhua quoted Khamenei as saying.
“Washington’s plan reflects their stupidity because they do not know that the Islamic republic is nothing but the Iranian nation and these two cannot be separated,” he made the remarks at a ceremony at Imam Hussein University in the capital Tehran.
The US is not able to press Iran alone, so it has made coalitions with “disgraceful and reactionary states” in the region, he said.
“We will increase our bond with the people day by day,” he said, stressing that “the hatred of the Iranian nation for the United States has been increasing day by day.”
Following US President Donald Trump’s decision to quit the historic Iran nuclear pact on May 8, Washington vowed to re-impose sanctions against Iran and inflict punishments including secondary sanctions on countries that have business links with the Islamic republic.
Firms doing business in Iran were given up to 180 days to terminate investments, before they risk huge fines.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Riyadh : Iranians and Qataris are among the more than 1.7 million Muslims gathered in the holy city of Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage, even though the governments in Tehran and Doha are at odds with Saudi Arabia.
Despite closing the border with Qatar on June 5 as part of the Gulf countries’ economic and diplomatic offensive against the gas-rich emirate, Saudi Arabia has allowed 1,340 Qataris to enter the country for the Hajj.
Doha earlier refused Riyadh’s proposal to arrange charter flights for Qatari pilgrims.
The Saudi minister of Islamic Affairs, Saleh al-Sheikh, told his country’s official news agency SPA that the kingdom serves all pilgrims without discrimination or exclusion on the basis of nationality, tribe or sect.
Political tensions are overshadowing the great religious event, but have not prevented 86,500 Iranian pilgrims from coming to Mecca this year after they were excluded last year following a deadly stampede during the 2015 Hajj.
Nearly 2,500 people – including 400 Iranians – died in the stampede, which Riyadh blamed on the Iranians, while Tehran faulted the Saudi government.
The Jeddah-based International Islamic News Agency said that the pilgrims include 25,500 people from the United Kingdom, 20,500 from Russia, 17,000 from the United States and 10,000 from France, among many other nationalities.
For the first time, the Saudi Ministry of Education has established nurseries where parents can leave their children while they perform the rituals of the pilgrimage, which lasts several days and takes place in different places.
Some 15,000 officers will ensure the safety of the Hajj and escort the pilgrims, according to the director of security, Gen. Mohamed al-Sharif.
The head of Saudi civil defense, Suleiman al-Amro, said that more than 3,000 “machines and devices” had been deployed in the holy places to respond to possible emergencies.
Besides the deadly stampede, the 2015 Hajj was also marred by a crane accident at the Great Mosque that left 100 people dead.
—IANS
