Iran

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran's health minister warned on Tuesday that coronavirus deaths may more than double soon if Iranians flout rules aimed at containing the virus, as new cases surged to a record high in the Middle East's worst-hit country.

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran would fully implement its 2015 nuclear deal if US President-elect Joe Biden lifts sanctions on Tehran, which Zarif said could be done swiftly through "three executive orders".

TEHRAN, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Iran reported on Tuesday 13,352 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections in the country to 788,473.

Of the newly infected in the past 24 hours, 3,079 required hospitalization, said Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, during her daily briefing, according to the ministry's website.

The epidemic has by now claimed 42,461 lives in Iran, she noted, after the overnight registration of 482 deaths related to the coronavirus.

17 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran will impose a ban of domestic travel across the country starting Saturday, government spokesperson, Ali Rabiei, announced yesterday.

"Iranian National Committee of Combating Coronavirus has decided to impose a number of measures, including a nationwide ban on movement between the country's cities," Alalam TV quoted Rabiei as saying. He added that the move was "to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus."

TEHRAN, Nov 16 (NNN-IRNA) – Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, announced yesterday, the final steps in the drafting of an Iran-Iraq defence cooperation charter, after meeting with Iraqi Minister of Defence, Juma Inad Saadoun.

“The two countries prepared a charter that is now in its final stages and will be signed in the near future,” Baqeri said, on the side-line of the meeting with the Iraqi official, who arrived in Tehran on Friday, to discuss military cooperation.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran is to introduce air taxis which will become operational by early next year according to the head of Iran Aviation Industries Organisation. The taxi fleet has already obtained an operational flight permit with the first routes already devised including a separation of air taxi lines from commercial flights.

14 Nov 2020; MEMO: US sanctions are preventing Iran from making advance payment to the global COVAX facility set up to provide COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries, the Iranian government said as the virus death toll kept climbing in the Middle East's hardest-hit state, Reuters reports.

Battling a third wave of the coronavirus, Iran is considering imposing a two-week total lockdown in the capital, state media reported as the death toll rose by 461, close to a daily record, to 40,582 on Friday.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — For over half a century, a massive graveyard on the edge of Iran’s capital has provided a final resting place for this country’s war dead, its celebrities and artists, its thinkers and leaders and all those in between.

But Behesht-e-Zahra is now struggling to keep up with the coronavirus pandemic ravaging Iran, with double the usual number of bodies arriving each day and grave diggers excavating thousands of new plots.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran will not renegotiate the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal with the US, a spokesperson for the country's Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

Saeed Khatibzadeh said: "The nuclear agreement is a thing of the past, and it cannot be reopened and renegotiated by anyone," in reference to US President-elect Joe Biden who is due to take office at the end of January.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran has revealed a secret underground missile base used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Aerospace Force.

The base, which looks like an underground city with a network of long tunnels, included Iranian-designed, liquid-fuelled, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) dubbed Emad.